By DPA
Cairo : Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan met Thursday in the Sharm el-Sheikh resort in an attempt to coordinate Arab position ahead of next week’s Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, while efforts continue to coax reluctant Arab states into attending.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to join the mini-summit later Thursday to map out a joint strategy and urge reluctant Arab countries to participate in the landmark meeting.
The US issued invitations Tuesday for over 50 countries and organizations to attend the meeting, which will be the most serious Middle East peace conference since former US president Bill Clinton brokered the Camp David talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in 2000.
The Arab League will host a meeting of Arab foreign ministers Friday in Cairo to try to bridge differences.
To come up with a united Arab stance may prove to be as difficult a task as past attempts by Arab countries to reach a consensus on anything to do with peace talks with Israel, political observers noted.
But the Arab ministers may decide to go Annapolis and not miss out on a chance to achieve peace, as remote as it may seem for many in the Middle East.
The position was summed up by the Yemeni foreign minister Abdullah al-Qirbi on his arrival in Cairo Thursday for the Arab League meeting.
The Annapolis conference is not about normalization of Arab relation with Israel but is just a start, said Abdullah al-Qirbi.
Syria, a key player whose Golan Heights have been under Israeli occupation since June 1967, has been invited to Annapolis.
Damascus’ official position is not to attend unless the conference agenda includes the Golan Heights.
Damascus is expected to declare its position in the Arab League meeting. But intense lobbying is going on behind the scene to coax it into attending.
The king of Jordan paid a rare visit to Damascus this week. This coincided with talks held by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Sultanov with Syrian officials over the Annapolis conference on Wednesday.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi was also part of the lobbying effort. Prodi urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a telephone conversation Wednesday evening to go to Annapolis.
Damascus has voiced reservations over the US invitation, saying it was invited as a member of the Arab committee to activate the Arab peace initiative while it wanted to be invited as a key party in the conflict.
Although the invitation made a reference to the Arab initiative and international resolutions as bases for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, it falls short of meeting Syria’s demand that the conference agenda should include the Golan.
The Arab peace initiative was adopted at a summit in Beirut in March 2002.