Iraq's ambition to host an Arab summit meeting has come up against certain harsh realities, writes Salah Nasrawi Though Iraq's beleaguered government still says that Baghdad is set to host an Arab summit meeting next month, lingering political and sectarian conflicts and regional turmoil are making such a meeting appear a distant prospect. Iraq's Shia-led government wants to host the meeting as a showcase for its new-found control over the country following December's withdrawal of US troops. A fully-fledged summit meeting would also help Iraq to restore its regional status as a leading Arab country. Last year, Baghdad cancelled plans to hold the Arab League's annual conference meeting in the city after threats of boycott by the Sunni-dominated Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Some other Arab governments also opposed the summit on the grounds that Iraq lacked sovereignty because it was still under US military occupation. Under the League's statutes, Arab leaders convene at a summit meeting on a regular basis every year in late March. The League agreed that Arab countries would take turns hosting these summits according to alphabetical order. Last year was Iraq's turn, and the summit was rescheduled for 11 May before being postponed for a second time. Now Baghdad says it will send envoys to deliver official invitation letters to Arab heads of state to attend the summit meeting in the Iraqi capital on 29 March. On Monday, Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari urged Arab governments to participate in the summit at the highest level. A statement from his office said Zebari had discussed the summit with his Arab counterparts while in Cairo this week for a ministerial meeting on Syria. Last week, Zebari said his government had received assurances from the League's secretariat that all Arab leaders would be represented at the meeting. Arab League Assistant Secretary-General Ahmed bin Helli, who flew earlier this month to Baghdad to review preparations for the summit, said the Cairo-based group supported Iraq's efforts to host the summit. Yet, only a month before the date of the summit, no Arab country has officially announced it is sending envoys. The issue is expected to top the agenda of an Arab ministerial council in March. The Iraqi government says it has spent some $450 million on the summit, including on the renovation of several of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's palaces and key hotels in Baghdad to host the participants. Many Iraqis have questioned the amount of money spent on the meeting, saying that it is badly needed to provide basic infrastructure for the country's cities, which suffer severe shortages of water, electricity and medical services. The government's enthusiasm for the summit comes amid one of Iraq's worst political crises since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country by the United States, and it threatens to reignite sectarian violence. The row erupted last month when Shia-Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's government ordered the arrest of the country's Sunni vice-president on charges of running a death squad and asked parliament to fire a Sunni deputy prime minister who had described Al-Maliki as a dictator worse than Saddam Hussein. Both men are senior leaders of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, which won the largest number of seats in the 2010 elections. The bloc responded to Al-Maliki's moves by boycotting parliament and the cabinet and accusing him of trying to centralise power in the hands of his own Shia National Alliance. The row has also pitted the Shia-led government against the country's Sunnis, leaving many of them opting for federalism and stoking up sectarian tensions. It has been accompanied by a surge in bombings and other attacks, mainly targeting Shias and Sunni fighters who have taken on the insurgents. Sunni lawmakers and ministers have since returned to work in an attempt to ease the tensions. They hope that a national conference proposed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to be held in the coming weeks will help the rival factions to work out solutions to the crisis. Meanwhile, the conflict has extended beyond Iraq's borders, triggering political tensions with Iraq's Sunni-dominated neighbours who view the rise of Iraq's Shia majority with suspicion and fear the growing influence of Shia Iran in Iraq. With Syria facing a mounting uprising that is increasingly polarising the Arab world, the summit also faces another hurdle. While most Arab countries support the revolt and have called on Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to step down, Iraq's Shia-led government has refused to join efforts against the Alawite dominated-regime in Syria. Iraq also angered the Gulf nations when its government, along with Iran and other Shia groups, such as the Lebanese group Hizbullah, criticised the GCC incursion into Bahrain last year, which was designed to assist the Sunni government's crackdown on the Shia opposition. Bahrain has decided not to attend the Baghdad summit, the country's Foreign Minister Khaled bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa saying that his country was staying away because of Iraqi Shias' alleged support for the Shia uprising in Bahrain. "How can a summit be held, or how can you accept to attend a summit, in a country that gives you problems day after day," he asked in an interview with a Russian television network last week. Saudi Arabia, a staunch supporter of Bahrain and a leading force behind Arab campaigns to oust al-Assad, also threw doubt on the future of the summit. "It is impossible to hold a summit in Baghdad," said Saudi newspaper Arab News last week in an editorial. The paper said that the Saudi stance could be related to "the lack of a common agenda for formulating a unified vision" rather than to "the dangerous security situation in Iraq and the existence of serious conflicts among political factions there." Press reports in the Gulf have suggested that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are spearheading moves to convince other GCC members to join them in a call to put off the summit. Last year, a request to cancel the summit meeting triggered anger from Iraqi Shias. Now they will feel humiliated by any attempts to postpone the summit next month. Such a move would be seen as a means to isolate Iraqi Shias and pressure them into changing their stance with regard to Syria and the Bahraini Shias, a crucial test of the Iraqi Shias' power. On Sunday, Iraq backed an Arab League resolution designed to tighten the noose around the Al-Assad regime by calling on the UN Security Council to create a joint peacekeeping force in Syria. Iraq's Shia-led government apparently hoped the gesture would smooth out Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries' position on the summit. But if they do not feel rewarded, they could become more sectarian and entrenched and move closer to Iran. "Baghdad is entitled to and ready to host the summit. No one is doing us any favours," announced Ibrahim Al-Jaffari, leader of the Shia National Alliance last week. Baghdad has played host to two key Arab summit meetings in the past. In 1978, under pressure from Saddam's former ruling Baath Party Arab leaders agreed to expel Egypt from the League because of late Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat's peace treaty with Israel. In May 1990, Saddam used the second Baghdad summit meeting to rally Arab support for his regime in its confrontation with the West over its weapons programme, later leading to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This history may provide both Iraqis and Arabs with a lesson. Both are walking on a tightrope without a safety net, and what seems to be the usual inter-Arab quarrel could easily turn into a wider sectarian conflict fuelling Shia-Sunni discontent at a time of rising regional tensions.
