Middle East:Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is to urge Arab states to turn up in large numbers at next week's Annapolis summit in the US to relaunch peace talks with Israel, telling Syria and Saudi Arabia that their own and Palestinian interests will be served by their presence.
Mr Abbas will join Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, and King Abdullah of Jordan at the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh today to try to finalise Arab attendance after the US issued invitations on Tuesday. Foreign ministers of the 22-member Arab League are also to meet in Cairo.
Nearly 50 countries or organisations have been invited. If all of them turn up it will be the biggest international conference ever held on the Middle East.
Attention is focused on Syria and Saudi Arabia because although neither has relations with Israel each carries great weight: Syria because of its dispute with Israel over the Golan Heights, and Saudi Arabia because of the Arab and Muslim legitimacy it commands.
Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal has said the kingdom will attend if the agenda deals with the core issues involved in setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Tony Blair, envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, flew to Riyadh yesterday for talks with King Abdullah. "The Saudis want to attend but they need a fig leaf," a senior Arab diplomat said. "I think they will be there because no one's going to miss this. But the level of representation will be crucial. And a lot depends on what the Israelis offer."
Having agreed to free 440 Palestinian prisoners, Israel yesterday approved a shipment of ammunition and 25 armoured vehicles to Mr Abbas's security forces in the West Bank, controlled by Fatah. Fatah lost control of Gaza in June to Hamas.
Egypt's foreign ministry said the US invitation stressed the importance of Cairo's participation to help "efforts to achieve progress in Palestinian-Israeli talks with the aim of reaching a just and permanent solution to the conflict".
Arab countries that may be reluctant to attend - for fear of giving Israel the "normalisation" it craves - can do so under the cover of the peace initiative re-endorsed by the Arab League last March. That called peace with the Jewish state a "strategic choice" but insisted it had to be based on a return to the 1967 borders. - (Guardian service)
