Arab summit conspicuous for its absentees

The San Francisco Chronicle
March 28, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/28/MNDHVRILJ.DTL

By Hugh Macleod
Beirut

According to the Baath Party, rulers of Syria for 43 years, Damascus is the “beating heart” of pan-Arabism, the center of Arab “unity and dialogue” and the place to “close ranks” and “confront foreign plots” aimed at dividing the region.

But when the Syrian capital hosts its first meeting of the Arab League this weekend, the 22- nation organization annual event will be marked by what is not said and snubs by regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

“We hope that the ice will melt between Syria and Saudi Arabia,” the Saudi ambassador to the Arab League, Ahmad al-Qattan, told reporters in Damascus after announcing that Saudi King Abdullah would not attend the summit.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is dispatching a junior official in his place, and Jordan’s King Abdullah has yet to announce his participation. The three rulers are considered moderates and key U.S. allies in the region.

And the three Mideast leaders blame Syria for using its strategic alliance with the radical Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which leads the political opposition to the moderate Western-backed government in Beirut, to block the election of a president in Lebanon.

The country has been without a head of state since November and a functioning parliament since late 2006, when Hezbollah ministers resigned their Cabinet posts, three months after the group claimed a “divine victory” in its July War against Israel.

Analysts say Arab states are increasingly concerned about Syria’s deepening military and political ties to Iran, whose Shiite Muslim rulers are seen by many Arab states as trying to dominate the Sunni-majority Middle East.

Washington accuses Tehran of sponsoring terrorism and attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, charges the Iranians deny, but which topped the agenda on a tour to the region last week by Vice President Dick Cheney.

“There are two projects in the region. The Iranian project and its resistance to
America and the Arab project, which has many points that match with the West,” said a member of Syria’s Baath Party, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to the media. “Syria is in a strategic partnership with Iran and Hezbollah and there is nothing the West can offer it to make a dramatic change.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also canceled plans to attend the summit because of an ongoing government crackdown against Shiite fighters in southern Iraq, a militia that Washington accuses Iran of arming and financing.

Lebanon’s ruling coalition is also boycotting the summit, calling on Arab states to pressure Syria to establish diplomatic ties with Beirut and abandon “its deep-seated greed in Lebanon and its persistent attempts to restore the time of hegemony.” In response, Syrian Foreign Minister Waleed Mualem insists “Syria wants a stable, sovereign Lebanon” and blames Washington for trying to “torpedo the summit.”

In fact, Syria’s isolation from moderate Arab states and the West has been growing over the past three years. Saudi relations worsened after the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premiere Rafik Hariri, who made billions building palaces for the Saudi royal family, and carried a Saudi diplomatic passport. Hariri was killed at a time when the Syrian military, deployed in Lebanon since the 1975 to 1990 civil war, dominated the security and political landscape.

The assassination drove Syrian soldiers out of Lebanon and swept an anti-Syrian coalition into power, amid an international chorus of condemnation of Damascus. An ongoing U.N. inquiry into Hariri’s murder initially concluded that Syrian intelligence agents were involved. Syria vehemently denies any responsibility and has said it will not cooperate with a tribunal now being established in The Hague to try suspects in Hariri’s death.

The assassination prompted the United States to withdraw its ambassador to Damascus and escalate existing economic sanctions that target the assets of President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle, including his security chief, Assef Shawkat.

France has also stepped up its isolation of Syria, following the failure of Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to mediate the presidential election dispute. “Syria should understand the need for Lebanon to be a free country,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Britain’s Houses of Parliament during a state visit Wednesday.

The fractured summit comes at a moment of acute political tension in the region, with a fragile cease-fire between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatening Israel with “open war” following last month’s assassination in Damascus of the militia’s top commander Imad Mugniyeh. Israel denies any role in Mugniyeh’s death.

“There is huge tension and crises everywhere, from Lebanon to Turkey to Iraq to Pakistan,” said a former Western diplomat here, who requested anonymity. “Syria is acutely aware that Israel is looking to restore its deterrence capability … Nasrallah is saying to Israel that if it thinks it can pick Hezbollah off piece by piece from Iran and Syria it will be the cause of a regional war.”

Despite the presence of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah says it has replenished its stock of rockets, estimated by Israel at around 30,000, and which defense analysts say are smuggled from Iran via Syria. On Thursday, Israeli defense officials said Hezbollah had acquired Iranian rockets with a range of about 185 miles, meaning the guerrilla group can now hit Israel’s heavily populated centers and as far south as Dimona, the site of Israel’s nuclear reactor.

There have also been local press reports in recent weeks that Syria is deploying troops near its border with Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa valley, a Hezbollah stronghold, and fortifying positions along its southern border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Most observers say the region is once again on an inevitable collision course. “The fact that the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not attending the summit is a bad sign. Decision making in this region comes from the top so this makes the summit less able to settle major differences,” said Andrew Tabler, Damascus-based editor of Syria Today magazine. “This underlines the division between Syria and moderate Arab states and makes conflict this year more likely.”

Ousam Safa, head of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies said the fractured Damascus summit is also a possible opportunity for Syria to extend its hard-line stance by tempering an Arab peace initiative drafted by Saudi Arabia and adopted during the 2000 Arab summit in Beirut.

The initiative recognizes Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from occupied lands taken during the Six Day War in 1967 and the formation of a Palestinians state with Jerusalem as its capital. The proposals were at the center of U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace talks in Annapolis, Md. last November.

“Syria has seen Israel’s intransigence and continuing attacks on Palestinians and may attempt to introduce more conditions to the peace proposal and weaken Arab resolve around it,” said Safa. “The danger of Saudi and Egypt downgrading their representation is that Syria will be left to dictate the summit’s agenda on its own.”