Arab Summit Opens as Leaders Struggle with Rifts

{{Arab leaders struggling with an array of foreign policy disputes opened an annual summit on Tuesday to try to forge a common stand on regional crises such as Syria’s war, and on what many of them see as the menace of Iranian-U.S. rapprochement.}}

The gathering in Kuwait follows an unprecedented row among members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) alliance of Gulf Arab states over Qatari support for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and a verbal spat between Iraq and Saudi Arabia over violence in Iraq’s Anbar province.

The annual meeting of the 22-member League of Arab States is expected to agree on more humanitarian action in response to Syria’s war, which has entered its fourth year and put a severe strain on neighboring countries hosting refugees.

However the row among Gulf Arab states is unlikely to take centerstage at Tuesday’s gathering.

Gulf states tend to keep their disagreements private, making a decision by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain earlier this month to recall their ambassadors from Qatar especially sensitive.

Kuwait, which kept its ambassador in Doha, has offered to mediate in the dispute and is anxious to see the summit take place without further divisions.

Shortly before the summit opened Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, smiling broadly, stood between Saudi Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, holding hands with them in an apparent attempt to convey a mood of reconciliation.

{reuters}