DAMASCUS, 29 March 2008 — More Arab leaders yesterday joined the long list of those staying away from an Arab Summit in a snub to the Syrian hosts for backing the Lebanese opposition.
The Yemeni vice president will represent his country and Jordan will send only its permanent representative at the Arab League to the annual two-day meeting opening today. The Lebanese government is boycotting the event, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt announced earlier this week that they would send low-level delegations. Bahrain sent a deputy prime minister.
Veteran Syrian journalist Thabet Salem said Syria still aimed to show it was a “no surrender” country whose policies were in line with popular Arab sentiment. The longstanding political dispute in Lebanon has dominated preparations for the summit, which would normally concentrate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an Arab peace initiative first launched in 2002 and the problems in Iraq and the Darfur region of western Sudan.
But this year Arab leaders tried to use the threat of a poor turnout at the summit to put pressure on Syria to give the green light to the election of a new Lebanese president on terms acceptable to the Lebanese government and parliamentary majority, diplomats say.
When the Lebanese Parliament missed its last chance to choose a president this week, the Arab countries expressed their reservations by sending low-level delegations. Saudi Arabia is sending only its Arab League representative to the event. A junior minister will represent Egypt. The leaders of Morocco and Oman also sent other representatives.
Egyptian state-run newspapers launched a scathing attack on Syria, saying it did not exert any effort to make the Arab Summit a success. “The Iranian-Syrian alliance threatens the Damascus summit,” Ousama Saraia, editor in chief of the Al Ahram daily newspaper, wrote in a front-page column. He accused Damascus of driving the situation in Lebanon toward chaos and of supporting Iranian interests in the region.
A Yemeni official said Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi would represent his country at the summit. President Ali Abdullah Saleh will not attend because of “special circumstances,” the official added, without elaborating.
Iraq is sending Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi rather than Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who is busy with the outbreak of fighting between government forces and fighters loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki is on his way as a guest on the sidelines but the UN secretary-general, who often attends Arab Summits as a guest of honor, is not coming this year, Syrian officials said.
By late evening, 10 heads of state from the 22 Arab League members had arrived — from Algeria, the Comoros, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian Authority.
In a preparatory session on Thursday, Arab foreign ministers failed to overcome differences over three key issues — Lebanon, an Arab peace proposal to Israel, and a Yemeni initiative to broker reconciliation between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
After the meeting, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem accused the US of trying to hinder constructive Arab dialogue at the summit, which is officially dubbed “the summit of joint Arab action.”
“I view the American efforts as (seeking) to obstruct the summit,” he told reporters. Syria appeared to be trying to steer the summit toward a tough line on Israel.
In Thursday’s session, it sought to insert language saying that the Arab peace initiative “should not be open-ended,” suggesting the Arabs should set a deadline for Israel to accept it, Arab diplomats said. But other states opposed such a move. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door session.
The Saudi-sponsored peace initiative offers Israel peace with all Arab countries if it returns Arab lands, allows the creation of a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem and finds a solution to the refugee issue.
Also in Thursday’s session, Abbas’ Palestinian delegation opposed Yemen’s call for the summit to endorse a Yemeni proposal for reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah faction, the diplomats said.
