By Xinhua
Damascus : The 20th Arab League (AL) summit kicked off in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Saturday, with only 11 heads of state of Arab countries, including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, showing up at the gathering.
The annual summit of the 22-member pan-Arab bloc started at 11:35 a.m. (0935 GMT) at the Palace of Umayyad in southern suburb of Damascus with an opening speech by Assad, the rotating chairman of the summit.
Arab issues, especially the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the Palestinian reconciliation, are expected to top the agenda.
Some key Arab leaders, including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi King Abdullah and Jordanian King Abdullah II, shunned the summit due to a rift on the Lebanese issue with the host while Lebanon boycotted the annual gathering.
Despite the low-level representation of some Arab states, Syria has expressed faith in hosting a successful Arab summit and repeatedly stressed the importance of Arab joint action and solidarity.
Arab foreign ministers renewed commitment to the Arab peace initiative as a base to find a just comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict on all tracks during their one-day preparatory meeting on Thursday.
The Arab peace initiative, adopted in Beirut summit in 2002, calls for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories that were occupied in the 1967 war in exchange for a complete normalization of relations with the Arab states.
During talks with AL Secretary General Amr Moussa on the summit agenda on Tuesday, Assad stressed Syria’s keenness to enhance Arab solidarity and the importance of outlining proper mechanisms for the implementation of the Arab summit resolutions.
Sun Bigan, China’s Special Envoy on the Middle East, also attended the opening session of the summit.