DAMASCUS, Syria — As Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, opened the annual Arab summit meeting here on Saturday morning, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister convened a competing news conference in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, with new criticism of Syrian policy, underscoring the bitter political feud that nearly upended this year’s Arab gathering.
The meeting had already suffered from deliberate absences, with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt boycotting in an unusual rebuke to Syria, which they blame for the continuing political crisis in Lebanon. King Abdullah of Jordan and President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, both strong Saudi allies, also decided to stay away at the last minute, as did Lebanon.
Just 11 of the Arab League’s heads of state were in attendance as the conference opened; it is rare for all 22 members to attend.
Some Syrian officials suggested that it was a victory for the two-day Damascus gathering to take place at all, given the Saudi and American campaign against it. American officials have been hinting broadly that they would prefer that Arab leaders not attend.
Controversy is common at Arab summit meetings, and leaders have often refused to attend for varying reasons. But the ferocity of this year’s divisions is unusual. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have repeatedly voiced their anger at Syria, which they accuse of deliberately prolonging the political deadlock that has left Lebanon without a president since late November.
Behind that dispute lurks a more basic division. Syria is allied not only with Hezbollah, which is competing for power in Lebanon, but also with Shiite Iran. Sunni Arab nations view Iran with deep suspicion, especially in light of its critics see as its nuclear ambitions.
As presidents and princes gathered here on Saturday, the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, speaking in Riyadh, accused Syria of refusing to abide by Arab League decisions on Lebanon and called for member states to punish it.
Mr. Assad, meanwhile, gave a mild 20-minute opening speech in which he avoided the subject of Arab divisions and denied that Syria had interfered with Lebanon’s affairs. “What is happening on the ground is the exact opposite,” he said. “The pressures which have been put on Syria for more than a year, and increasingly for the past several months, have been for Syria to intervene in Lebanese internal affairs.”
Mr. Assad devoted most of his speech to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, asking “Shall we look for other choices, or keep giving unconditional initiatives at a time when Israel chooses what it wants, whenever it wants?”
At a meeting earlier this month, Arab foreign ministers threatened to reconsider their support for the 2002 Arab peace initiative, which offered Israel normal relations in exchange for several conditions including withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
But the Arab foreign ministers who met here on Thursday before the summit meeting were unable to reach agreement on how to toughen their policy toward Israel.
Despite the controversies, this year’s meeting had all the usual pomp and ceremony that attend the gatherings, from the ritual airport arrival of the participants to the theatrics of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader. Dressed in a loose black cape, he delivered a rambling speech about the failure of Arabism, the history of Israel, and the importance of Africa. He told his fellow Arab leaders that America had betrayed Saddam Hussein, and warned them: “Even you, or us — friends of America — Washington might decide to hang us one day.”
Although the Syrian hosts generally steered clear of mentioning the absence of leaders from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, an editorial in the state-owned newspaper Thawra on Thursday touched on the subject, suggesting that the real villain was elsewhere.
“It is enough for the Arab summit in Damascus that the American ghost is banished,” the editorial said. “It is enough that for the first time, all of its decisions and agreements will be free of the American virus.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
