Candidates to hold 3-day, Arab-issue conference

Leading presidential candidates will address the Arab-American community for the first time on the campaign trail this weekend in Dearborn.

The Arab American Institute will host a three-day conference in metro Detroit, home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans outside of the Middle East - with about 403,000 people of Arab descent.

The event has attracted eight presidential candidates and representatives from President Bush's re-election campaign to speak either in person or via satellite.

Civil liberties, U.S. foreign policies and immigration issues should be the key issues discussed with political leaders, said Richard Fawal, national political director for the institute.

And the Arab-American community, 3 million people nationwide, is an important vote because of their large concentrations in the expected swing states of next year's presidential election, he said.

"Since 9-11, a lot of attention has been focused on the Arab-American community's viewpoints," Fawal said. "They have sort of become a benchmark of the general American view."

And their vote is up for grabs as more than 500 people are expected to attend including Arab-American leaders from more than 20 states.

"Oddly enough, our community is historically split like the rest of the country," he said.

Presidential candidates supporting multilateralism over preemptive unilateralism and favoring a balanced approach to Middle East peace making will find strong support among U.S. voters, according to recent polls conducted by Zogby International, a New York polling firm.

Democratic presidential candidates U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, U.S. Sen. John Edwards and U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun will speak at the conference.

Marc Racicot, the national campaign manager for Bush-Cheney '04 also will speak, along with Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, a former Republican senator from Michigan.