Every Arab summit has dealt with a major issue

Doha: Since the convening of the first Arab summit in 1964, until today, each Arab meeting has been marked by either a major issue or circumstance. This year's summit is no exception.

"Arab reconciliation is what characterises the current Arab summit," said Abdul Barri Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi.

"For the first time, reconciliation has been added to the agenda of the summit," he told Gulf News.

This, he believes, is a sign "of an unclear Arab vision" unlike the past summits, and comes amid potential dialogue between the US and Iran.

Many Arab countries are concerned with growing Iranian influence in the region's affairs, mainly in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestinian territories. Many Arabs also accuse Tehran, which occupies three UAE islands, of attempting to have a bigger say in Arab affairs.

Furthermore, the Iranian nuclear programme is a cause of major concern to Arab countries.

Apart from the status of "confusion", the Doha summit is also characterised by a high number of participating Arab leaders in comparison with the last meeting in Damascus, when nearly half of the Arab leaders stayed away because of inter-Arab differences.

However, heavyweight Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak surprisingly announced his absence in a move interpreted as a result of the inter-Arab rift.

But this, also "shows a division in the so-called moderate camp. And this is something new," Atwan said in reference to both Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

As well as Arab reconciliation, the arrest warrant against Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir for alleged war crimes in Darfur tops the agenda of the leaders' talks in the Qatari capital, along with the recent rising right wing to power in Israel and the future of the peace talks.

Prior to the summit's opening, Al Bashir's attendance or absence had gained great attention.

"This was a diversion from the pressing issues," Atwan said. "People were focusing on whether Al Bashir would take part or not in the summit while he faces an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court."

However, different realities and new developments on the table of Doha's summit do not revise the fact that the meeting in Qatar resembles the previous ones in many aspects, including the surrounding regional circumstances and challenges, analysts and observers say.

The Doha summit "is no different from previous ones," Mahmoud Bakri, executive editor of the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al Usbou (The Week) said.

"The crises and challenges are the same," he told Gulf News.

While several obstacles are still facing the peace talks between Arabs and Israel, analysts expect more hurdles because of the right-wing in power in Israel. The list of "pending issues" looks the same, they added.

They range from achieving stability and security in many Arab members mainly in Iraq, Somalia and Mauritania, to border issues, such as the Western Sahara issue, between Morocco and Algeria.

"The differences remain", Bakri said in reference to the inter-Arab differences.

These differences are not expected to be solved at the Doha's summit, according to Atwan's interpretation.

The turning point in the history of Arab differences and summits was in August 1990, when an Arab summit was held in Cairo to discuss the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Since then a major rift was created in the inter-Arab relations.

Moreover, other summits were recorded in history because of prominent adopted resolutions in the past 45 years. As an example, in 1974 the Arab summit acknowledged the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. In 1979, Arab League members suspended Egypt's membership over the Egyptian-Israeli peace Accord.

Egypt was readmitted during the 1989 summit. Finally, in 2002, Arabs endorsed a Saudi-proposed peace initiative that called on Israel to withdraw from all Arab occupied land for full relations with the League's members.