Ever since the Arab League announced that the next summit will be held in Damascus, the Syrians have been excited — to say the least — about the upcoming event.
No summit has taken place in Damascus since the Arab League was established during the Second World War. Roads are being paved, trees trimmed, old buildings polished and hotels renovated.
Syria is preparing to receive 750 journalists from around the region who will cover the event and transmit it live — and for free — across Arab channels.
Villas are being erected near the Conference Palace, the summit’s venue, to accommodate senior Arab delegations.
A plan to bring the Arab leaders to Bloudan, a summer resort near Damascus where the first Arab meeting was held over the Palestine issue in 1936, is also doing the rounds.
The Syrians have been stressing that this summit will not be about Lebanon.
Foreign Minister Walid Al Mouallem said: “The summit agenda is not dedicated to ... finding a solution for Lebanon!”
The Syrians are worried, however, that some Arab leaders might boycott the summit in protest against the lack of progress in the Lebanese presidential dilemma.
The Arab press has been speculating a no-show for heavyweight Arab leaders such as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. Articles, interviews and plenty of commentary have been coming out in the Saudi media — mainly in Al Awsat, its London-based website, Al Sharq, and the TV channel Al Arabiya — blaming the Syrians for four months of presidential vacuum in Lebanon.
Negative signs kept coming from Saudi Arabia, the last of which was the withdrawal of the Saudi ambassador to Syria during the last week of February.
The Syrians closed down Al Sharq and banned Al Awsat from entering the Syrian market. The private Syrian press was given the green light to respond harshly, while the official media kept a back channel open to Riyadh, refusing to publicly criticise the Arab countries.
The state-run daily Tishreen ran an appeal to Arab leaders: “Come to Damascus before it is too late. Come to Damascus with open hearts, an enlightened mind and will for dialogue.”
Joshua Landis, an expert on Syrian affairs who runs the popular blog, SyriaComment, told Weekend Review: “As the leading power in the Arab world today, the failure of the Arab League is a Saudi failure. For this reason, the Saudis will not want to boycott the summit altogether because it will reflect badly on them, not just on Syria.”
The Saudis will show up in Damascus represented by Ahmad Bin Abdul Aziz Qattan, their Ambassador to the Arab League. One well-informed source noted: “They [the Syrians] will hold the summit, even [if] no kings show up, even if it is [attended by only] half a consul!”
The Syrians are no longer concerned whether the Saudis will show up. They are placing greater emphasis on Turkey and Iran, the source added.
That might explain why, not surprisingly, instead of sending Foreign Minister Mouallem to Riyadh, the Syrians sent Bashar Al Shaar, the Minister of State for Red Crescent Affairs, to hand the invitation to Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal.
Also, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will not show up at the summit, probably in a gesture aimed at soothing
tensions.
Representing Iran will be Foreign Minister Manoucheher Mottaki.
A foreign diplomat based in Damascus speculated: “Although the Saudis won’t be here, the Jordanians are coming and so are the Qatari. Algerian President Abdul Aziz Bouteflika will be present and so will Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. We are not so sure about King Mohammad VI of Morocco, who is very close to the US.”
Iraq’s Nouri Al Maliki will come to Damascus and so will UAE President His Highness Shaikh Khalifah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President Omar Al Bashir of Sudan and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Emir of Kuwait will attend, despite the political turmoil in his country.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who enjoys excellent relations with Riyadh, has also sent worrying signals to the Syrians, hinting that he, too, might not come to Syria because of the crisis in Lebanon.
He recently told Al Arabiya: “We should not be [in Damascus] resolving a problem that Syria is party to.” A president must be elected in Lebanon before the Damascus summit. “[N]ot solving this issue will mean failure for the summit,” Mubarak added.
To this, Mouallem snapped back: “Arabs were absent from earlier summits … Never was there full attendance at any summit.”
Call of duty
Echoing Mouallem, Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Miqdad said: “It is the duty [of Arab leaders] to come to the Arab summit in Damascus; this is your summit after all, not a Syrian one!”
Scott C. Davis, an American writer who owns a publishing house in Seattle, is an expert on Syria and has been observing the Syrian scene since 2000, told Weekend Review: “The time has passed when Syria can or should absorb the penalties of war and conflict. For this reason, it is of utmost importance that all members of the Arab League assemble in Damascus, work out their differences over Lebanon and devote themselves to crafting coordinated action.”
With regard to Lebanon, the Syrians have been debating who to invite. Since there is no president, the only alternative would be the second-in-command, Fouad Al Siniora. That is symbolically and politically difficult for the Syrians, given his anti-Syrian record since 2005.
Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri spoke on behalf of both the Syrians and the Hezbollah-led opposition, saying that in order for the summit to succeed, he did not mind if Siniora were invited. He was, however, quick to point out that “he will not come”.
Secretary-general of the Arab League Amr Mousa noted: “What is important is that we get guarantees [from the Syrians] that Lebanon will be represented.”
The Syrians responded by sending Assistant Foreign Minister Ahmad Arnous to Beirut, to deliver an official invitation to Siniora — at a time when Siniora was out of Lebanon.
By sending the assistant minister and delivering the invitation to Fawzi Saloukh, the pro-Syrian foreign minister who resigned from office in 2006, the Syrians were making it clear: “We are inviting Siniora unwillingly to Damascus.”
Syria’s ambassador to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, said: “We will invite Lebanon to the summit. Who will represent Lebanon is an internal Lebanese issue — it does not concern us.”
The Siniora cabinet is toying with the idea of sending an ambassador to Damascus, who would deliver a speech at the opening ceremony and then return to Beirut. The ambassador will probably be William Habib, a relatively unknown figure in Beirut politics, who serves as Ambassador to Greece.
Positive facade
This will be if the Saudis send a junior delegation to Syria. If it is more serious, the Lebanese will act differently. Since the presidential election has been postponed to April 22, one option is to appoint former president Amin Gemayel as the minister of industry.
That way he can attend the Damascus summit as a present member of government, a former president and as a Maronite notable.
Ali Abdul Karim, the Syrian Ambassador to Kuwait, noted: “No Arab state has said that it will not be attending the summit.” The Syrian press displays a similar attitude of defiance, showing that everything is going on as planned, without even once referring to a proposal made by Amr Mousa to postpone the summit for two months.
The only coverage of his latest Syria visit was that Mousa inspected the premises where the summit was scheduled to be held and that he was “pleased with the preparations being made by the Syrians”.
For its part, the Arab League denied any intention of holding a pre-emptive summit — to hollow out the Syrian one — in Cairo or Sharm Al Shaikh — in mid-March.
It was reported by the Saudi daily Al Hayat through sources in Jordan. Hesham Yousuf, Mousa’s bureau chief, denied knowledge of a summit of eight “moderate” Arab leaders before the Arab one in Damascus, saying: “We refuse this terminology for Arab states … and there is no talk about any Arab summit, except the one scheduled for Damascus.”
He quickly added: “If there are any smaller summits, they do not concern the League.” The pro-government website, Syria-News, snapped back at reports saying that the summit was off. It said: “The Arab Summit will be held in Damascus on March 29 and 30.” Reviewing the situation, Professor Landis added: “The summit is destined to fail.
“Not since 1948 has the Arab world been so disunited at a time when unity is of the utmost importance. Today the unity of Iraq hangs in the balance. Disunity among the Arab states will make the task of uniting Iraq almost impossible.”
Dr Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
