Arab leaders' summit postponed

Egypt today offered to host a new meeting of Arab leaders, but the head of the Arab League said there were no immediate plans to do so following the collapse of the Arab summit two days before its scheduled opening.

The two-day Arab League summit was postponed indefinitely late on Saturday after foreign ministers failed to bridge differences over how to tackle a US reform plan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Arab leaders had hoped to use the conference, which was to begin tomorrow, to relaunch a Saudi-crafted peace initiative to Israel and to submit their own proposals for political reforms in response to US calls for greater freedoms.

In Cairo, President Hosni Mubarak said that Egypt, home to the Arab League headquarters, offered to host a new summit “at the earliest time that can be agreed on.” The statement expressed “surprise and regret” for the Tunisian decision.

Syria blamed host Tunisia for the collapse.

“This decision is entirely inexplicable. It is inappropriate,” Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa tried to put a brave face on the collapse, saying it was just a postponement, not a cancellation. He said the Egyptian proposal to host the summit would be pursued.

“It’s important to have a summit, and the effort is continuing. I hope it will be held soon,” Moussa said.

Getting Arab states to agree to a summit has been a tough task in the past. The Tunis meeting, although scheduled a year ago, had been in doubt for weeks.

“There must be certain time for the summit to resume,” Moussa told reporters. He acknowledged the damage done to the Arab political world, but said this would eventually be overcome.

“Certainly this is not one of our best moments,” he acknowledged. “The Arab system is not in a good shape.”

But he brushed aside questions about the survival of the Arab League, saying: “Life goes on.”

The break-up of the summit came in a late-night announcement from the Tunisian hosts. The Tunisian Foreign Ministry cited differences on issues “of great importance to the process of development, modernisation and reform in our Arab countries.”

US officials had hoped the summit would breathe new life into a two-year-old Arab peace initiative toward Israel and address the challenge of political reform as the US attempts to establish democracy in Iraq.

Washington had no immediate comment on the postponement.

Last week’s assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin provoked widespread outrage in the Arab world, making it politically risky for some states to pursue a peace initiative.

A consultant to the Saudi government, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Egypt, Syria and Lebanon maintained that talk of peace and reform in wake of Yassin’s assassination was politically unwise. Jordan and Qatar argued that the Arabs should press ahead despite the killing, he said.

In preliminary talks among Arab foreign ministers, the Syrians also sought to block proposals for political reform and for endorsing Libya’s move to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programmes.

Moussa had cautioned that Arab reaction to US calls for reform had been negative since many Arabs distrusted American motives because of US support for Israel.

Protests in Yemen and Lebanon also sent clear messages to Arab leaders that the public wanted more opposition to Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians.

Hamas’s political leader, Khaled Mashaal, urged Arab leaders to support the resistance against Israeli occupation instead of offering Israel more proposals.

“Peace with Israel has become an illusion, we should not be wasting more time on it,” Mashaal, head of Hamas’ political bureau, told Arab language television station Al Arabiya.