Arab League Official Sees No Hope for Unity : Mideast: ‘Conflicts have submerged our shared priorities,’ says envoy who has resigned.

Describing the Arab world as “fragmented to a terrible and unprecedented degree by the events in the gulf,” the man who for 11 years represented the Arab League in the United States and the United Nations has explained his recent resignation by saying that he sees no prospect that the league can recover its unity.

Clovis Maksoud, a former Lebanese journalist, said in a telephone interview over the weekend that he will remain at his post until the end of September.

“Throughout my term of office I have looked upon the Arab League as the Arab national home,” Maksoud said in a letter made public late last week. “Now the Arab house has fallen on itself, and the conflicts have submerged our shared priorities. Unable to rationalize or analyze these developments, I am no longer able to cope with them.”

His letter faulted Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait, as well as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for immediately calling for U.S. troops, rather than seeking an “Arab solution.”

“On the one hand, I cannot accept the violation of an established legality--the invasion of Kuwait,” the envoy wrote in a letter addressed to Chedli Klibi, who had earlier resigned as secretary general of the 22-member league. “On the other, I cannot accept the rush towards the internationalization of the crisis. The original action was wrong and the ensuing reaction is wrong. . . . I feel in all honesty unable to do my duty after the Arab world has been dragged into the depths and fragmented in such a way.”

The worst of it, Maksoud lamented in the telephone interview, is that what he considers Arab national interests--such as Palestinian rights, the return of territories occupied by Israel and the restoration of Lebanon’s unity--will be indefinitely postponed by the clash in the gulf.

“In 11 years here I have established some credibility,” the normally buoyant Lebanese declared bitterly. “I can’t say there is an Arab position on anything anymore.”

Maksoud said Lebanon’s Prime Minister Salim Hoss has told him that Lebanon will ask other Arab states to join in calling for his withdrawal of the resignation.