JEDDAH, 21 December 2003 — Leaders of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council are to open their 24th annual summit in Kuwait City today amid calls for political and economic reforms in the member states.
This is the first summit since the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April. “The recent events in Iraq will push the GCC leaders to devise a strategy serving the security interests of the member states,” Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah told Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, on the eve of the summit.
Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, is leading the Kingdom’s delegation to the summit.
According to GCC officials, the two-day summit will focus on fighting terror, ties with the new Iraq, and economic issues such as monetary union, a single currency, a common market and a railway linking GCC states.
The conference is expected to endorse a joint agreement on combating terrorism. It will study a charter for educational reforms with a view to “reformulating school curricula” in the member states and preventing the young from being influenced by extremist ideologies.
“The chapter of the GCC that I lived through has closed. Now we are at the threshold of a new era... an era without Saddam Hussein and without the Iranian revolution,” said Abdullah Bishara, the first GCC secretary-general.
“The first thing Kuwait’s GCC summit should do is build a Gulf security network by establishing a credible security infrastructure... We must not continue to depend on the United States,” the AFP news agency quoted Bishara as saying.
“In order to reduce reliance on the United States, we must encourage the Iranian rational approach,” especially after signing the additional protocol on nuclear arms and establish normal ties with Iraq, he said.
The present situation is a golden opportunity for the GCC to relaunch itself toward realizing a “Gulf confederation” that serves all member states but keeps their individual existence intact, said Bishara, who was secretary-general for 12 years. He said the GCC must now introduce some “steam” into its procedures and take a number of hard decisions.
Ahmad Al-Rubei, a former Kuwaiti minister and MP, said while overemphasizing security issues, the GCC had ignored internal reforms, democratization, social development and women’s issues. “In the past, they had excuses in regional instability and the fear from Iran and later Saddam. Now regional tension has disappeared and it’s high time for internal reforms,” Rubei said.
“It is unfair that the situation should remain unchanged. We must get to the issues that have been ignored for a long time. We must focus on political and economic reforms,” Rubei said.
A number of key economic decisions were adopted at previous summits, but implementation has been slow.
The summit is being held amid heightened security involving hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles and thousands of soldiers and police. Several roads leading to the summit venue have been closed.
