Arab leaders are today expected to agree a $2 billion aid package to rebuild Gaza after a three-week Israeli offensive.
Arab countries, meeting for the third time in five days today, are split over how to deal with Israel's action against Hamas-led Gaza. The crisis has clouded longstanding plans for a two-day summit that initially was meant to focus only on economic cooperation.
Leaders will still discuss at the Kuwait meeting how to counter the impact on the Arab world of the collapse in oil prices, the global economic slowdown and the credit crunch.
But they are now also expected to back the Palestinian Authority and discuss plans to set up a $2 billion fund to rebuild the battered Gaza Strip after Israel and Hamas both declared unilateral ceasefires.
Participants in Kuwait hoped the meeting would narrow the divides exposed by a meeting in Doha, where Qatar and Mauritania froze ties with Israel and Syria, which broke off indirect peace talks over Gaza, pronounced a 2002 Arab peace initiative dead.
Gulf Arab leaders also met in Saudi Arabia last week, but regional powerbrokers Egypt and Saudi Arabia shunned the later Doha meeting, preferring to merge the Gaza discussion into the economic summit.
"The Kuwait summit is a chance to find a joint Arab stance," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said yesterday that Gaza would be a priority. "Gaza and the Palestinian cause are among priorities . . . and the development projects that connect between our interests should also take our attention," he said.
The flurry of gatherings reflects the Arab divide between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and their allies on one side, and Syria, Qatar and their allies on the other.
Reuters