5 - 11 April 2001
Issue No.528
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 5 - 11 April 2001 Issue No.528 |
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Appraising the summit
Has the Amman summit offered anything new to the Arab world, or is it a repeat performance of what Arab gatherings have always been? Mohamed Sid-Ahmed comments
Did the Amman summit succeed or fail? The answer to the question can go either way, depending on what criterion we use. If it is whether the summit lived up to the high hopes that were pinned on it, then the answer would have to be that it failed. The resolutions adopted by this, the first in the series of regular summits to be held once a year, have done little to assuage the deep sense of frustration, not to say despair, now afflicting most Arabs. Not only did those gathered in Amman fail to bring about the desired reconciliation between Iraq and Kuwait, they also failed to renew the pledge they made at last October's Cairo summit to allocate $1 billion to support the Intifada. Rubbing salt into the wound of Arab disappointment with the results of the summit, Sharon launched an all-out offensive against the Palestinian people which he justified as necessary to combat terrorism and put an end to the Intifada, while Bush reinforced the Israeli position and deprived the Palestinians of any protection by vetoing a Security Council resolution calling for an international observer force in the Palestinian territories.
If we were to use another frame of reference, namely, the reinvigoration of the Arab League since the implementation of the resolution adopted at its session last October to convene an annual Arab summit, we would probably come to a different conclusion. The decision to hold regular sessions of the Arab summit has introduced a whole new dynamic to inter-Arab relations by moving them from the exclusive realm of relations between states with absolute sovereign prerogatives to a sort of collective Arab decision-making mechanism that could eventually become an authoritative frame of reference transcending inter-Arab squabbles. It has created a de facto situation which holds out much promise for the future, even if the achievements of the first annual summit were below expectation.
However, it is a situation that is still in the making, one that can very well face serious setbacks unless a conscious effort is made to develop and strengthen it. A sign that things may be moving in the right direction is that for the first time outgoing Arab League Secretary-General Esmat Abdel-Meguid's slogan, "reconciliation based on transparency," has been genuinely applied. There was a great deal of hard talk at the summit, even if most of it transpired behind closed doors not in open sessions. The exception was Gaddafi's address to the plenary session, an irreverent no-holds-barred tirade against what he saw as ineffectual Arab policies. But even he insisted that all microphones and television cameras be switched off before he began, signalling that while transparency between Arab leaders may be required, some issues lie beyond the scope of public debate. Still, whatever the limitations on transparency, there is no denying that significant progress towards greater openness has been made. This can be credited to a growing awareness among Arab leaders of the magnitude of the challenges they are facing and of how far the overall Arab situation has deteriorated. Under Sharon, these challenges have reached such unprecedented heights that collective Arab action has become unavoidable.
Possibly the most substantive breakthrough achieved at the summit was the Syrian-Palestinian reconciliation. For many years an anomalous situation prevailed, with several Arab states having direct relations with Israel while relations between two key Arab parties, the Syrian state and the Palestinian Authority, were completely ruptured, making it painfully obvious that animosity among the Arabs themselves was sometimes sharper than their contradictions with Israel. The decision to revive Syrian-Palestinian coordination as an extension of Jordanian-Palestinian-Egyptian coordination not only brought this untenable situation to an end, it also proved that a new generation of Arab leaders like Bashar Al-Assad can rise above obstacles placed in the way of Arab solidarity by animosities inherited from the past.
The will to initiate a new stage in the long and often turbulent saga of Arab solidarity was manifested by many of the participants. In his address, Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir announced that he had originally intended to apprise the summit of the problems his country is facing, including its internal problems, but decided to refrain from doing so because the summit had more pressing problems to discuss. The fact that Bashir even considered inviting the summit to discuss internal Sudanese issues is indicative of a higher stage of inter-Arab cohesion than ever witnessed before.
But one problem that remained resistant to a solution by the summit was what was euphemistically termed the "situation" between Iraq and Kuwait. In an acrimonious exchange, the Iraqi delegation said there could be no reconciliation as long as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia allowed American and British military aircraft to launch raids against Iraqi targets from their territory, while the Kuwaitis retorted that they would not bring the issue up with the Americans and British before receiving an apology from Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, a guarantee that it would not be repeated and a pledge by Baghdad to abide by UN resolutions approved after the war.
Although it failed to bring about the desired reconciliation between the two parties, the summit can nevertheless be considered a success in that it made the most comprehensive Arab effort yet to heal the breach between them. The fact that the parties chose to describe that breach as a "situation" rather than a "dispute" suggests good faith on their part, as does their acceptance of the clause in the final declaration which committed Jordan's King of Abdullah to work towards a reconciliation between Iraq and Kuwait. At the same time, however, the top decision-makers of the three countries involved were conspicuously absent from the summit (Saddam Hussein, the emir of Kuwait and Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who usually represents King Fahd at such meetings), their absence a tacit admission that conditions were not yet ripe for a final agreement.
The Western press went out of its way to portray the summit as a failure, harping on its inability to solve the Iraqi-Kuwaiti problem as though this and not the Intifada was the criterion by which to measure the success or failure of the summit. It deliberately downplayed the summit's success in speaking with one voice on the Palestinian issue, supporting the Intifada and condemning the American veto, in a strongly worded final statement. In the final analysis, the real criterion is whether the Arab leaders will make good on their pledge to send $40 million a month to the Palestinian Authority and what percentage of that sum will actually reach its intended beneficiaries. At the October summit, $1 billion were pledged to the Palestinians, but according to Nabil Shaath, only three per cent of this sum was actually paid. This time, the billion-dollar pledge was not reiterated; only a quarter of the sum was promised as monthly payments over the next six months.
Some further accomplishments of the summit were agreements reached in the economic field, namely, President Mubarak's initiative to convene an Arab economic conference next November in preparation for the formation of an Arab common market. It is high time to lay the foundations for such a market, similar to other markets developed by major economic groups elsewhere in the world. Actually, what is required is not only economic and commercial joint ventures, but also technological projects. An electricity network including three Arab countries has already been agreed upon and plans are being discussed to develop it still further. A network of pipes to link the oil and gas fields in various Arab countries to the consumers of Arab oil is also under study. The Arabs should also consider a pan-Arab project in the field of providing potable water to face the prospect of water shortages in the coming years.
These proposals can serve as a point of departure for a new approach to the peace process. Instead of testing the balance of power between Arabs and Israelis in military terms only, efforts should be furnished to redress a balance that is now tilted in Israel's favour by building Arab unity in a variety of fields. At the same time, Israel's attempts to deepen inter-Arab contradictions must be countered by Arab efforts to deepen the contradictions between Sharon and his opponents in Israel. Such a development could change the very rules of the game in the Arab-Israeli dispute. As the new secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa is up to this momentous task.
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