Pre-Summit Arab Unity Takes a Hit

Although the empty seat belonging to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat will be the center of attention at an Arab League summit that opens here today, the absence of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will be even more keenly felt.

It had been widely expected that Israeli conditions would block Arafat’s attendance, but Mubarak’s eleventh-hour decision Tuesday to bow out was a stunning development--and dealt a serious blow to a Saudi-backed Middle East peace proposal.

Mubarak’s abrupt withdrawal from the summit undermined what had been a growing sense of unity among leaders here, who had appeared on the threshold of setting aside individual agendas in order to inject a political dialogue back into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Instead, the summit will be marked by notable no-shows: Half the seats reserved for 21 heads of state plus Arafat will be occupied by underlings. In addition to Egypt and the Palestinians, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Sudan and Mauritania are all slated to be represented at a lower level, although in some cases--including Saudi Arabia--that is because of illness.

In an added blow, a senior Jordanian government official said today that King Abdullah II also will not attend. He will be represented by Jordan’s prime minister, the official said.

The failure of the Arab leadership to gather in its entirety at the summit serves as a reminder of one uncomfortable reality that the Arab League has struggled to overcome since it was founded in 1945: There is no “Arab world” to speak of, not in political terms. Myriad economic, social, political and religious forces are constantly pulling at the seams of Arab unity.

“Outside of our cultural identity, you have some strategic ties, but it is not a love affair,” said Abdel Moneim Said, director of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a government-sponsored think tank in Cairo.

But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has galvanized the Arab world, and the Saudi peace plan had sparked a degree of optimism in a region weary of bloodshed.

As the leader of the Arab world’s most populous nation, one of only two Arab countries--along with Jordan--to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, Mubarak’s presence at the summit was considered essential if the Saudi plan was to have credibility.

After denying earlier reports that he would skip the summit, Mubarak dispatched his foreign minister late Tuesday to announce that he wasn’t coming because of “domestic commitments”--a euphemism that was widely viewed as thin cover.

Officials close to the negotiations over the Saudi plan said it appeared that Egypt was jealous that Saudi Arabia had stolen its spotlight with the peace initiative. Egypt’s peace proposals have gone nowhere.

The Arab heads of state who gather today are still expected to endorse the Saudi proposal. Although it is vague, just four or five lines promising “normal relations” if Israel withdraws from lands occupied since 1967, many Arab leaders looked to the initiative as a step toward peace, and repairing an image badly damaged Sept. 11.

But the barriers to unity are high. Morocco and Algeria are locked in a bitter border dispute involving the Western Sahara. Libya and Tunisia are also bickering over borders. Libya and Lebanon are at odds over the disappearance more than 20 years ago of a prominent Shiite religious leader in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Tensions exist even between Syria and Lebanon, its satellite state, over border and sovereignty issues. Eleven years after the end of the Persian Gulf War, Iraq and Kuwait are still at loggerheads over sovereignty and prisoners of war.

The issues run the gamut from political to cultural, concrete to emotional. The divisions are so profound, and so dispiriting to those who have pan-Arab aspirations, that the run-up to the Arab summit has been preceded by a lot of angst and hand-wringing.

“Instead of ushering in the 21st century strong and united, we Arabs started off the second millennium weak and defeated,” read an opinion piece that recently appeared in the Egyptian daily newspaper Al Ahram.

The Saudi daily Al Watan recently ran an opinion piece that said: “Impotence and the dearth of any meaningful achievements in all fields are pushing the Arab world ever deeper into crisis. The future appears very bleak indeed, full of dangers for the vast majority of Arabs.”

But it appeared that support for the Palestinians and opposition to a U.S. military strike against Iraq were issues that could unite the Arab community in a way that had previously eluded it. Amr Moussa, the charismatic leader of the Arab League, who took over nearly a year ago with the goal of energizing the moribund organization, had hoped to exploit those feelings.

In the days after Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah first revealed the outlines of his peace proposal, many Arab leaders reacted cautiously. Syria, in particular, had raised the prospect that President Bashar Assad wouldn’t attend the summit. Yemen withheld its comment. Libya offered its own proposal.

The problem was, the peace plan was too straightforward: If Israel withdrew to its pre-1967 borders, it suggested, all Arab nations would offer full social, political, economic and cultural relations with the Jewish state. The proposal didn’t specifically address the issue of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state or the more problematic issue of the so-called right of return for the 4 million or so Palestinian refugees.

“The proposal looks like it unites all the Arabs together and opens a path for the United States to solve the problems,” said Talal Salman, publisher of the Lebanese newspaper As Safir. “But any proposal that does not include the right of return is not complete. It does not address the core issue.”

But Moussa and Saudi Arabia’s Abdullah persuaded the Arab leadership to go along with the plan. The draft statement to be presented to the leadership at the summit did have some changes but stayed close to the initially vague proposal.

Instead of normalization with Israel, which some objected to, the phrase “normal relations” was used. On the right of return, which Israel has rejected as threatening to its existence, the Arab League called for a “just solution”--meaning one that allowed for either returning or for receiving compensation.

Even the issue of Arafat’s ability to travel to the summit had appeared to unite those present. Although members of his delegation had hoped that he would attend, if for no other reason than to show defiance of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, there was a broad feeling here that the whole controversy had made Arafat’s presence felt whether he was physically here or not.

In the conflict over Iraq, there also had appeared to be progress. Although it was unlikely that a deal would have been sealed by the end of the summit, talks between Iraq and Kuwait were by all accounts cordial and moving forward. Kuwait and Iraq for the first time had committed themselves in writing to a recognition of each other’s sovereignty--but the talks broke down when Kuwait asked for an added sentence that had Iraq promising never again to invade.

The summit leadership appeared poised to pass a resolution that opposed any aggression against Iraq, not necessarily naming the United States but making it clear who it meant.

The Saudi initiative and the statement opposing an Iraqi invasion will still be voted on, and will still carry the label of pan-Arab proposals.

“The issue is very clear,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said. “Egypt supports the [peace] proposal, and the Egyptian delegation received instructions from the president regarding that support.”

But with so many heads of state absent, and Mubarak sending his proxy vote, observers said that they can only hope that the summit’s decisions will be taken seriously.

Special correspondent Ranwa Yehia contributed to this report.