Saudi Summit: 'Cat Fight and Piss Match Going Home with Tail's Between their Legs?'

Arabs set for peace offensive at Saudi summit


March 27, 2007

by Lamia Radi

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud(L) speaks with Saudi Prince Satam bin Abdul Aziz upon arrival at Riyadh airport. Arab leaders gathered in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a summit which will formally relaunch a long-dormant Arab plan for Middle East peace and actively seek negotiations with Israel.

Arab leaders gathered in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a summit which will formally relaunch a long-dormant Arab plan for Middle East peace and actively seek negotiations with Israel.

The annual meeting of heads of state, which starts on Wednesday, comes after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appealed to Arab governments to "begin reaching out to Israel" by building on the peace blueprint first adopted at a summit in Beirut in 2002.

Arab foreign ministers agreed to revive the plan in preparatory talks on Monday. The blueprint offers Israel full normalisation of relations if it withdraws from all lands it occupied in 1967, and permits the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Saudi Arabia, a US ally and author of the blueprint, lobbied fellow Arab states to endorse the plan's revival, leaning particularly on the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which now leads a government of national unity with the Fatah party of president Mahmud Abbas.

Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya(L) and his Lebanese counterpart Fuad Siniora embrace ahead of a meeting in Riyadh. Arab leaders gathered in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a summit which will formally relaunch a long-dormant Arab plan for Middle East peace and actively seek negotiations with Israel.

Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya and Abbas flew into Riyadh aboard the same plane in a show of unity.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal also reportedly assured Saudi Arabia that the group, which does not recognise Israel, will back whatever consensus the Arab summit reaches on the peace plan.

Palestinian foreign minister Ziad Abu Amr, an independent in the new unity cabinet who is seen as an acceptable interlocutor by the West, told AFP that the international community should "isolate Israel" if it spurns the Arab peace offer.

The Palestinian president said: "If this initiative is destroyed, I do not believe that a better chance for peace will present itself in the near future.

"I think the Arab initiative is the most precious and important (plan) proposed since 1948 for a solution of the Palestinian problem and the occupation," Abbas told AFP.

Israel rejected the peace blueprint when it was first adopted, but Israeli leaders have recently spoken of the plan as a starting point for talks.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni identified the plan's insistence on the right of return of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Middle East war as a particular stumbling block.

Saudi King Abdullah(R) welcomes Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad at Riyadh airport. Arab leaders gathered in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a summit which will formally relaunch a long-dormant Arab plan for Middle East peace and actively seek negotiations with Israel.

Arab ministers said their offer of talks with all parties including Israel was intended to address such problems.

The Arab League was "sending a clear message to the world about their determination to strive for peace," one minister told AFP.

Ministers were "declaring their readiness to open negotiations with the Jewish state about the modalities of their initiative, namely the thorny question of Palestinian refugees," he said.

The minister said the contacts would be undertaken by working teams whose membership would reflect the varying "relations with the rest of the world" of different Arab states.
Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab countries to have peace treaties with Israel, will handle the contacts with the Jewish state, he added.

In contrast with the display of unity by the Palestinians, Lebanon will have two delegations at Wednesday's summit, after the failure of Saudi-led attempts to resolve the rift between pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud and anti-Syrian Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Saudi King Abdullah(R) speaks to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas at Riyadh airport. Arab leaders gathered in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a summit which will formally relaunch a long-dormant Arab plan for Middle East peace and actively seek negotiations with Israel.

It will also be represented by two foreign ministers -- pro-Syrian minister Fawzi Salloukh, who tendered his resignation last November along with five other Damascus allies -- and anti-Syrian interim minister Tareq Mitri.

Siniora arrived in Riyadh to a low-key welcome, despite Saudi Arabia's close ties with his cabinet.

Lahoud was denied the guard of honour given to other heads of state and greeted at the airport by Riyadh deputy governor Prince Sattam bin Abdel Aziz rather than by King Abdullah.

The monarch did turn out to welcome Lahoud's Syrian ally, President Bashar al-Assad, meeting him for the first time since last summer's Lebanon war sparked a war of words between the two governments over the wisdom of Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers that sparked the conflict.

Iraq's Kurdish foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, hit out at fellow ministers after they drafted a resolution calling for amendments to the Iraqi constitution to give more power to the ousted Sunni Arab elite and reverse moves towards a federal system.

"We don't need a diktat from Arab countries," Zebari said.

Libya is the only member of the 22-strong Arab League boycotting the summit.

Saudi King Abdullah(R) welcomes Iraqi President Jalal Talabani(L) at Riyadh airport. Arab leaders gathered in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a summit which will formally relaunch a long-dormant Arab plan for Middle East peace and actively seek negotiations with Israel.