The long-awaited Arab summit, which was to have started in Tunis today, has been postponed. That is a burning shame. At an extremely crucial juncture in the region’s history, with an extraordinary number of issues on the Arab plate, a summit is vital to develop joint responses to challenges from within the region and outside. Divergent views over reform, a statement by the Tunisian Foreign Ministry said, forced the postponement. Only hours before the summit was canceled, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa had said Arab foreign ministers were heading toward agreement. The summit was to take up reform in the region in the wake of the United States’ own “Greater Middle East Initiative” for political and social reform in the region. It was apparently going to say that while reform is important, it will have to come through evolution, not revolution.
All the Arab parties have also said that reform in this part of the world must come from within and be attuned to the particular economic, social and cultural circumstances of individual states. It cannot be imposed from the outside.
The summit would have provided an ideal platform for Arab leaders to make that point, and make it forcefully. Arab leaders could have reinforced their views and driven their case for a domestically driven reform process forcefully and cogently home. It was a chance for the Arab countries to define their position before something is decided without their participation and, possibly, against their will. It goes without saying that if the Arabs fail to produce a plan of their own, the US may well insist on its own initiative and once again go it alone. Equally crucial was the issue of reform of the Arab League itself. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria had prepared a comprehensive package of proposals for this, including various measures that were designed to give the league the teeth that it so noticeably lacks — in other words, to bash it into a shape that would in future avoid debacles like the collapse of the Tunis summit. Discussion of these vital matters, too, has once again been put off indefinitely.
Had there been a summit, it would also have dealt with the Palestinian problem, taking account of Israel’s murder of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. It is of course possible that the summit would have produced no major resolutions, either on Palestine or on the other hot spot, Iraq. The history of results at Arab summits is mixed, to say the least; a standard formula of condemnation of this and that has too often been the only thing that could be agreed on. We will never know.
Still, any summit is better than no summit at all. Arab governments are now called on to decide quickly on a new date and perhaps a new venue for a summit that is badly needed.
