Arab League planning summit
The Arab League secretariat, Egypt and other Arab states are trying to arrange a summit in Egypt in about two weeks to discuss Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“They are close, but it requires a lot of discussion, and we hope they will be concluded soon. We are talking about a date in the next two weeks or so,” Hesham Youssef, spokesman for Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Monday.
“The agenda would be the general situation in the region with the focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the situation in Iraq,” he added.
Algeria, current chairman of the Arab League meetings after a regular summit in Algiers in March, is playing a prominent part in the preparations, he said.
In the past few weeks, Moussa has visited Syria, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and Libya. In Libya, at the time of an African summit, he met several Arab leaders.
Arab summits, which bring together representatives of the 22 Arab League members, are notoriously difficult to arrange.
Sometimes, only about half the heads of state turn up.
Youssef said it was too early to say what might come out of a summit.
“It’s in the early stages of consultations, so we are not talking about the outcome or what they are going to agree on. We are still talking about the possibility of convening this summit,” he added.