JEDDAH, 17 August 2003 — A three-way summit involving the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria will be held here next month. The summit will discuss strategies to achieve a united Arab stand on important issues such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iraq.
Foreign Ministers of the three countries will meet in Cairo during the first week of September on the sidelines of an Arab League meeting to prepare for the summit, Al-Watan reported yesterday quoting an informed source.
The new summit talks follow last week’s meetings of Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The three countries have already worked on a working paper to activate joint Arab action at a meeting of their foreign ministers — Prince Saud Al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Maher of Egypt and Farouk Shara of Syria — in Cairo last week.
Speaking to reporters after the Cairo meeting, Maher said the paper was meant to reach a unified Arab position.
He declined to give details of the paper but said it would strengthen the Arab League as a framework for joint Arab action. The Jeddah summit will discuss the paper in detail before presenting it to the Arab League summit, the source said.
“The paper was prepared in light of proposals made by Arab leaders in the past to activate joint Arab action,” the source told the Arabic daily.
The renewed Arab effort to restore the region’s influence on both the Iraq and Israeli-Palestinian issues came after the 22-member Arab League emerged divided and weakened from the US-led war on Iraq.
