DOHA, 22 December 2002 — With war looming in nearby Iraq, Gulf leaders opened a summit here yesterday calling for regional unity and fast inspections by United Nations experts searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The two-day summit of the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council as been overshadowed by the absence of four heads of state and the threat of a US-led attack on Baghdad.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad ibn Khalifa Al-Thani opened the summit in Doha with Sultan Qaboos of Oman, the only leader to show up for the annual meeting of council, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain, a close US ally and home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, announced before the summit that its king would not be attending. The leaders of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have not attended recent regional summits.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, who is heading the Saudi delegation to the summit said Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, have expressed their regrets for not being able to attend the current session “due to circumstances and reasons known to all” and that they wished that these reasons will cease to exist.
Addressing a closed session of the summit, Prince Saud said the king and the crown prince asserted that their non-participation by no means indicated a fallback on the support for and cooperation with the member states and their decisions that will be taken at this session, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
In his opening address, Sheikh Hamad said: “The extraordinary circumstances that surround our summit...strengthen our belief that the council is the right frame to consolidate our security and stability.”
Gulf states should work together without “disagreements in opinion and points of view in bilateral relations,” he added.
Concerning the US-Iraq standoff, Sheikh Hamad urged “the international inspection teams to carry out their duties in an objective and unbiased manner and the international community to do all it can to help end this mission as quickly as possible.”
Sheikh Hamad also urged further development of regional resources and said, “I think popular participation is one of the most important factors to achieve the desired development,” in an apparent reference to democracy.
Kuwait called on fellow GCC members to adopt a common stance on a speech by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in which he apologized for the August 1990 invasion of the country but also made threatening remarks.
“Kuwait presented a memorandum calling for a unified position regarding the speech by the Iraqi president,” a member of the Kuwaiti delegation told AFP.
“The memorandum spells out Kuwait’s position over this speech, which contains violations of Arab League and UN Security Council resolutions, an encouragement of terrorism and an interference in the internal affairs of Kuwait,” the official said. (Agencies)
