"Prince Saud Al-Faisal, foreign minister, will chair this 122nd session here at the GCC General Secretariat, with an agenda full of regional issues," said GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif Al-Zayani here yesterday.
Al-Zayani said the GCC foreign ministers will review a number of reports submitted by the GCC General Secretariat besides Syria and other regional as well as international developments. This GCC ministerial meeting comes just three days before the Gulf foreign ministers are to hold talks with their Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in the Saudi capital to discuss the developments in Syria.
"The meeting will be held with the Russian foreign minister on March 7," said a spokesman of the GCC Secretariat. He said that the six GCC member states are exerting efforts and following with sorrow and anger the increase in killings and violence in Syria. He said that the two GCC ministerial meetings next week — one on Sunday and the other with the Russian foreign minister on Wednesday — will be important opportunities to urge all other fellow Arab states and international community to adopt "decisive measures" against Syria.
Asked about the agenda of the Sunday's meeting, he said that an important report on transforming GCC into a strong union will be discussed. A GCC panel studying the Saudi proposal to transform the GCC bloc into a strong “Gulf Union” will submit the report. The report will be discussed and reviewed by the ministers. A number of other topics, regional and international, will also be taken up for discussions by the ministers, said a statement released by the GCC General Secretariat.
The statement said that regular sessions of the GCC ministers play a very important role in discussing current events in the region and to understand their international implications. The forthcoming session will take stock of the situation in the Middle East, especially Syria where peace and security looks a distant dream, while bloodbath and anarchy continue in that country, it added. The Gulf states, it said, had taken a strong stance against Assad's regime.
The Kingdom, like the other five GCC member states, expelled the Syrian ambassador last month and recalled its own envoy from Damascus to protest the "mass slaughter" of civilians. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has previously called for "critical measures" to be taken on Syria, warning of an impending "humanitarian disaster."
After a veto that angered the Gulf states as well as the Western nations and deepened the resolve of Assad's foes, Russia faces a daunting task, the statement noted.
Moscow could be tempted to play for time by seeking to shore up Assad, whose government has billions of dollars worth of contracts for Russian arms and hosts a naval maintenance and supply facility on its Mediterranean coast that is Russia's only military base outside the former Soviet Union. But many analysts say Moscow's veto was driven less by love for Assad or hope of a return to Syria's pre-conflict status quo than by Prime Minister Putin's desire to show his strength in international politics as he seeks a six-year term in a March presidential vote.
With Assad facing growing pressure from the West, Arab states and his opponents at home, Moscow's best hope of maintaining influence is being guided by many considerations. Russia is protecting the embattled Syrian president amid chaos and confusions, while it sometimes think of installing a regime in Damascus with Assad's loyalists and relatives. More than 7,500 people have been killed in the Syrian regime's crackdown since March last year.
