What would it take for President Mubarak to attend the Doha summit? Dina Ezzat seeks an answer Egypt announced that President Hosni Mubarak recently received an envoy of the emir of Qatar, Hamad Al-Khalifa, who handed to the Egyptian head of state an invitation to attend the Arab summit due to be held later this month in Doha under the Qatari presidency. The brief announcement issued by the presidency did not reveal the president's plans regarding personal participation in the summit that would be chaired by the country that Cairo has publicly qualified as a diplomatic enemy. Most recently Egypt blocked the participation of the emir of Qatar in a Saudi- hosted reconciliation summit that convened Wednesday with the participation of Mubarak, Bashar Al-Assad his Syrian counterpart with whom he had a serious political fallout, Saudi King Abdullah and Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah. The Saudi summit, for which preparations have been under way since the Kuwait development Arab summit in January, was designed by Riyadh to use the good offices of Abdullah and Al-Sabah to mend differences between the leading Arab leaders of the two camps -- the moderates, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the hardliners including Syria and Qatar. According to Egyptian and other Cairo-based Arab diplomatic sources, the mere convocation of the Riyadh summit was a major development. Some suggested it took intense and direct involvement from the Saudi monarch to get Mubarak to agree to attend. At odds for years with the Syrian president, King Abdullah decided back in January to put aside -- but not necessarily overlook -- his grievance towards Al-Assad for what Riyadh qualifies as a destructive Syrian influence in Lebanon. "When the Saudi monarch arrived in Kuwait last January to take part in the Arab development summit he spoke with the Arab League secretary- general and promised to lead an initiative towards Arab reconciliation to help formulate a unified Arab stance in the face of many threats," said a senior Arab diplomat who asked that his name be withheld. According to this same diplomat, in Kuwait Abdullah asked the host of the summit to arrange for a lunch table for the two Arab leaders along with the main foes: Al-Assad, Al-Khalifa and Mubarak. The lunch, in which Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa took part, was qualified in Arab diplomatic quarters as a mere ice-breaking opportunity. "At the time nobody seemed sure that reconciliation could pick up," said an Egyptian diplomat. Today, he added, there is not enough evidence that a genuine reconciliation is in the works. For a true reconciliation, he explained, there needs to be more than political niceties and expressions of solidarity along with collective Arab interests. "We will not be the ones to divide Arab ranks but we condition a genuine reconciliation on change of attitudes." According to this same diplomat, "from the Egyptian point of view both Syria and Qatar have not been serving the best interests of the Arab world either by supporting hardline political positions as adopted by Hizbullah in Lebanon or Hamas in Palestine or by too close an association with Iran." Egyptian officials are upfront in criticising Iran publicly, and more aggressively in private, for attempting to force its hegemony over the entire Middle East region. The Saudis have also been critical of Iran but still more engaging of Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi monarch received Iranian Foreign Minister Menochaher Mutaki. As such the Egyptian participation in the Riyadh summit last week is not necessarily an indication of Egypt's intention to turn a new page with Syria. As for Qatar, Egypt wants more. A senior government official said that if Qatar likes to see Mubarak present in the Arab summit then the satellite Al-Jazeera channel "needs to stop its attacks on Egypt. It is an assault designed to undermine Egyptian leadership and is not acceptable." According to government officials the decision on whether Mubarak will go to Doha for the summit is ultimately decided "only by the president". Certain factors will be included in the decision-making process; the attacks on Egypt by Al-Jazeera is only one. Other factors include the assessment of the president on the need or not for a high-profile Egyptian presence in the summit. "Obviously the Arab summit will address some serious issues, especially in sideline talks, in relation to the fate of Iraq after the upcoming reduction of US forces. And obviously Egypt, like some other Arab countries, needs to make sure that Iran will not use the withdrawal of American troops to fortify its hold on Iraq," suggested an Egyptian official. Moreover, the same official explained, the fate of Palestinian-Israeli engagement under a new US administration and Palestinian reconciliation that Egypt is trying to promptly strike will also be an issue that Egypt would be keen to see addressed by the summit. President Mubarak visited Oman yesterday on a two-day visit to discuss bilateral relations and "Arab and international issues". Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan discussed these issues earlier in the week and agreed, according to informed sources, that the next Arab summit needs to support the endeavours of Palestinian reconciliation to pursue peace talks with Israel under the auspices of the administration of US President Barack Obama. "The next summit will not talk about the suspension of the Arab peace initiative as was suggested by the emir of Qatar in a limited Arab-Islamic summit that he hosted last January with the abstention of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and several other Arab countries," an Egyptian diplomat asserted. Informed Egyptian officials suggest that so far there are no clear signs that the president is inclined to go to Doha. "At this point it is more likely that he, the president, would delegate the foreign minister or the prime minister," one official suggested earlier in the week.
