President Bachar Assad will inaugurate the 20th Summit of the Arab League, tomorrow Saturday 29th, 2008 in Damascus. According to the normal Diplomatic Protocals, the outgoing Chairman of the previous Summit shall hand over the presidency to the following Chairman, which means Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. However, neither the Saudi's king nor his foreign minister will attend the summit which means a Protocols' failure. This does not happens for the first time. In fact during the Arab Summit held in Tunis, President Ben Ali addressed the public before being handed the presidency from Bahrein because the Bahrainis' King was absent.
Yesterday, Thursday March 27th, 2008, the Tunisian Presidency Spokesman declared that President Ben Ali will attend the Summit. This is against my request.
From its side Lebanon will not attend the Summit at all. The Lebanese opposition have said that the Lebanese Government is submitted to the US dictations, in order not to attend the summit. At the same time, the same Lebanese opposition have contested the attendance of the Lebanese government to the summit when President Siniora declared that he may attend it. I believe that the Lebanese opposition must review their acts and decisions. The public is not idiot.
Many Arabs are talking that the summit of Damascus may fail because of the multiplicity of the Arabs problems. In reality, I have never seen a successful Arab League Summit. Did you? All of them failed and this summit is only a new one on the list.
