CAIRO: The Arab League summit set for Damascus at the end of the month will go forward as planned, announced the organization’s chief on Wednesday, but he urged Syria and Lebanon to mend their fences ahead of the meeting.
As Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo to plan their annual summit’s agenda, the fractious body was riven with rumors that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would boycott the meeting to show their displeasure with Syria’s meddling in Lebanon’s political crisis.
”The ministers called for putting the Syrian-Lebanese relations on the right track,” said League Secretary-General Amr Moussa at the closing press conference.
Following an Arab initiative calling for the deadlocked Lebanese parties to put aside their differences and elect a new president, Moussa carried out several unsuccessful diplomatic trips to Beirut to attempt to solve the problem.
”There is an Arab consensus that there should be a Lebanese president, this will ease everything,” he said.
The ministers’ final statement called for the election to happen on an ”exact” date, an apparent reference to the March 11 parliamentary session that will mark the 16th attempt to fill the post of president, vacant since November.
A senior diplomat from the anti-Syrian camp was quick to say, however, that if the Lebanese president was not elected, some countries might reconsider their participation.
”This is not final,” he said, on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. ”Today’s decision is not a green light to the Syrians. It might be yellow one – this was the message of today’s meeting.”
The ministers also discussed the deadlock in the Arab-Israeli peace talks, warning that the Arabs may reconsider their historic 2002 land-for-peace initiative if Israel continues its actions against the Palestinians.
The continuation of the Arab side working towards peace will be linked to Israel s readiness to commit to peace, Moussa said. This situation will be evaluated on what Annapolis achieves in the progress of time, he added referring to recent talks in the US.
We don t see that there is any tangible progress at this time, he said.
Moussa also confirmed that all Arab countries would be attending the summit, but he could not say at what level. Individual countries often show their displeasure with the state of regional affairs or specifically the host countries by not sending their head of state.
US-backed Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, were reportedly threatening to boycott the March 29-30 gathering if no president is elected in Lebanon by then.
At the heart of Lebanon s crisis is the three-month presidential deadlock that moderate Arab countries blame on Syria and its Lebanese allies, such as Hezbollah.
The failure to elect a new Lebanese president has compounded a yearlong power struggle between the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Seniora and the opposition led by Hezbollah.
In January, Arab foreign ministers – including Al-Moallem – unanimously adopted the so-called Arab plan for Lebanon. The blueprint backs Lebanese Army Gen. Michel Suleiman as the country s next president, calls on Lebanon to form a national unity government and adopt a new election law.
Saudi Arabia has so far refused to set a date for Al-Moallem to travel to Riyadh to deliver an invitation to King Abdullah to attend the summit.
Syria fears that a poor showing at the annual summit, the first to be held in Damascus, will further isolate President Bashar Assad s regime which faces charges of meddling in neighboring Lebanon.
