DAMASCUS, 31 March 2008 — This year’s Arab Summit has only worsened disputes among key players over crises like Lebanon and Iraq, possibly even more than previous stormy gatherings. For some, this raises the question: Why should Arab leaders have annual summits at all? The two-day summit here closed yesterday with a last-minute spat as Iraq refused to endorse the leaders’ final statement because it didn’t include a condemnation of terrorism in the war-torn country.
But the gathering had been controversial from the start.
Leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan boycotted — out of anger at Syria — and Lebanon didn’t send a single official.
In all, ten of the Arab League’s 22 heads of state stayed away, most for various personal disputes or troubles at home.
Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi — whose flamboyant style and off-the-cuff remarks routinely provide the summits’ only entertainment — both shocked and amused the delegations on Saturday when he mocked his fellow Arab leaders for their disunity and inaction.
Addressing the summit, he warned that Arab countries will be “marginalized and turn into garbage dumps” if they do not reorganize themselves.
He ridiculed the idea Arabs could cooperate on a joint nuclear program, a proposal repeatedly approved by the summit since 2006. “How can we do that? We hate each other,” Qaddafi said. “Our intelligence services conspire against each other.”
‘There Was Frankness’
Syrian officials insisted the summit was a success. President Bashar Assad said yesterday that disputes that broke out during closed-door meetings were a cause for optimism.
“There was frankness, and the most important thing was that the frankness was accepted despite the differences at many times,” he said.
The summit ended, as they do every year, with the leaders approving a sheaf of resolutions on the Middle East’s various issues that were vague enough to please everyone, masking over the hard differences between the countries.
Arab leaders decided in 2000 to make their summits an annual event after meeting only twice in the 1990s, hoping that a gathering every year would encourage unity and bring serious efforts to deal with the region’s many troubles. But since then, almost every summit has been marred by low attendance, chaos and walkouts.
With the exception of the Beirut 2002 summit when leaders launched an Arab peace initiative offering pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for the return of Arab lands, none of the other summits came up with any memorable decisions.
But it could be argued that this year’s Damascus summit went further, and actually worsened the Arab dispute over Lebanon. Syria says the boycott wasted an opportunity to deal with the crisis — and in the end, Lebanon was not discussed at the summit.
Not that any Arab officials are talking of stopping summits — and the Damascus gathering confirmed that the next would be held in Qatar. Saudi Arabia has talked of convening an emergency summit this year to deal with the Lebanon issue.
But Saudi and Yemeni officials have proposed that the annual gatherings be held at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo or in Egypt’s seaside resort of Sharm El-Sheikh to prevent boycotts sparked by anger at the hosting member country.
