Arab Leaders Boycott Damascus Summit Over Lebanon Crisis

Syria is trumpeting this weekend's Arab summit in Damascus as a triumph over US pressure - despite an unprecedented snub by some Arab leaders protesting against its negative role in the Lebanese crisis.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt are being represented by a diplomat and junior minister instead of King Abdullah and President Hosni Mubarak, while Lebanon is boycotting the event. The kings of Jordan and Morocco are also staying way.

Walid Muallem, Syria's foreign minister, hit back in talks with his Arab counterparts in Damascus yesterday, blaming the Saudis for the continuing Lebanese crisis. He warned, too, that Israel, backed by the US, was "incapable" of making peace.

The acrimony surrounding the two-day summit has laid bare deep divisions in the Arab world against a background of violence in the Palestinian territories and Iraq and dangerous deadlock in Lebanon.

The host, President Bashar al-Assad, is Iran's only Arab ally and a firm supporter of Islamist groups - Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories.

Syria's opponents are the pro-western Sunni Arab regimes which Washington calls "moderate" and which back Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in his struggle against Hamas.

The annual summits of the 22-member Arab League are supposed to be occasions for solidarity and unity, so the absence of many leaders is deeply damaging. Non-Arab Iran, by contrast, will be represented by its foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki.

"This summit will be one that confirms Arab differences instead of being a summit of Arab unity," commented Egypt's state-owned daily al-Ahram. Damascus wants the event "to be a picture of a Syrian victory more than a gathering for Arab reconciliation", said a columnist, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, in the Saudi-owned paper Asharq Al-Awsat.

The political paralysis in Lebanon is the immediate cause of the partial boycott, with the western-backed Beirut government blaming Damascus for blocking the election of a new Lebanese president.

But Muallem rejected the charge. "The effort has to come from all Arab parties with friendships and influence in Lebanon," he told reporters yesterday. "I point especially to Saudi Arabia, which wields a big influence on the [ruling] majority."

The minister blamed Washington for the absence of Syria's closest Arab allies.

Last year's Arab summit reaffirmed the Saudi initiative recognizing peace with Israel as a "strategic choice," but there has been pressure to withdraw it because of the recent violence in the Gaza Strip.