Arab nations should focus on tackling the core issues

Finally, leaders of 22 Arab League member countries have been given an invitation to attend the summit set to convene in Damascus on March 29.

A great achievement after the doubts persisting for months about the feasibility of the summit in Damascus due to the dithering by some of the Arab states on whether to attend it or not over the negative Syria influence on the election of a new Lebanese president.

Beirut, the closest Arab capital to Damascus and the closest city as well, was the last to be invited to the summit. Although it has had no president since November last year and is not expected to have one before the leaders' meeting in Syria, Damascus served the invitation to its resigned foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh. Lebanon's Prime Minister, Fouad Al Siniora, who is considered in Damascus as an 'illegitimate' head of state, was attending the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) Summit in Dakar.

Damascus has invited Beirut to the summit in what seems as a condition to entice Riyadh to attend the meeting although the Syrian leadership does not recognise the government in Lebanon following the resignation of its Shiite ministers in November 2006.

It is not clear yet who is going to represent Lebanon at the summit and if the Lebanese government will accept Syria's invitation or not, but it will be great if Siniora accepts the Syrian gesture and reacts positively to it. Lebanese and all Arabs need to mend relations with each other because of the challenges facing their nations at this stage.

Attendance

Theoretically, all leaders will either attend the summit or be represented through official delegations. When the fate of the summit was discussed amongst 'influential' Arab leaders, Damascus had said that nine out of 22 leaders had pledged to attend the meeting.

Syria said such a level of attendance ranks the summit among reasonably successful summits in terms of participation. Damascus was trying to prove that there was no reason to cancel or postpone the summit.

Regardless of the conflicting views about the importance of the summit as a pan-Arab institution and the feasibility of its meetings in terms of expectation and outcome, the fact that the regime is offering little coordination among Arabs, plans for the summit have not collapsed in face of the Lebanese challenge.

This is a great achievement that the participants at the Damascus Summit can celebrate, as it gives hope to around 250 million Arabs that there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. But after the celebration, Arabs should think of a way out of their paralysed joint-action system which come under the scanner every time they don't reach a unanimous agreement about an issue, whether it is strategic like the stance towards Israel or procedural like the movement of trade among Arab countries.

Since their first meeting in Anshas, Egypt in 1946, it took Arab leaders 35 years during which they met 25 times before they could decide on the importance of convening annually at different venues based on the alphabetical order of names of Arab countries. The decision was taken at the Cairo Summit in 2000.

Arab leaders who will hold their 33rd meeting (since the league was formed in 1945 in Damascus this month and the 8th since the meetings became annual) should decide in Syria that the summits must be held in the future at the set times and venues, regardless of the political stance towards the countries hosting the event and the relations with their leaders.

The efforts invested by Arabs before the Damascus summit to endorse the regularity of their annual meeting should reduce red tape henceforth. The move to cut bureaucracy and protocol should help Arab leaders to focus on core issues rather than on formalities.

Invitations

There is no need for official invitations for Arab summits. Syrian top envoys - mainly the Foreign Minister, Walid Al Mua'alem - made 20 trips to different Arab capitals in order to hand over invitations to Arab kings, emirs and presidents.

Except for Lebanon, which has no president, the letters were issued by Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and, according to news from Beirut, Siniora's invitation was issued by his Syrian counterpart.

In my opinion, the venue and the timing of the meeting should become sacrosanct instead of the formalities and protocols.

Arabs should live up to the challenges confronting their nations instead of wasting their energy on deciding whether they should meet or cancel their meetings because of differences in views. Arabs should instead set up a mechanism to implement the decision of the majority instead of fighting each other over words and statements.

Arabs should live up to the spirit of the 21st century that does not respect minor players in international political arenas because it is dominated by giant blocs and sophisticated interests.

Arab leaders should discuss how to implement a small step in unity, be it the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, the political settlement in Lebanon, reconciliation of the Palestinian National Authority with the elected Hamas government in Gaza, instead of discussing how to achieve peace in the Middle East.

A project of two or three small issues should be more than enough if sincerely implemented and more valuable than discussing broader issues without coming to an agreement.

The European Union should be an example for Arab leaders on how to achieve unification instead of getting caught up in the divisive maze from the very beginning.

The Damascus Summit should become the turning point in joint Arab projects towards more practicality at the expense of mere formalities.