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Arab leaders feud at summit

Syria and Qatar are key points of heated discord

Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani fired back on Tuesday at attempts to put pressure on Qatar.Stephanie McGehee /Reuters

KUWAIT CITY — Arab leaders openly feuded over the region’s most intractable problems at their annual summit on Tuesday, particularly the inability to resolve Syria’s civil war and anger at Qatar for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

A day of speeches at an opulent Kuwaiti royal palace painted a picture of an Arab leadership crippled by divisions.

The Arab world’s latest fault lines are surfacing three years after Arab Spring revolts swept the region, removing autocratic leaders in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia and collapsing into interminable war in Syria. The revolts empowered Islamist groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, though the group is now reeling after Egypt’s military last year removed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

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Saudi Arabia and Egypt have declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. They, along with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar to protest its support of the group and what they call its meddling in their internal affairs.

In the summit’s first day, the Saudi Crown Prince, Kuwait’s ruler, and Egypt’s president pushed for a joint approach to terrorism, saying it posed an imminent danger to regional security.

The calls amounted to a way to pressure Qatar, which supports the Brotherhood, is home to many of its leaders, and is accused by its Gulf neighbors of arming Islamic militants among the Syrian rebels.

Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, called for Arab interior and justice ministers to meet before June to draft guidelines for what every nation must do to confront terrorism.

The implication was that Qatar will be held to any guidelines that emerge — and could face isolation or reprisals if it failed to meet them.

In a clear dig at Qatar, Mansour called for the extradition of wanted individuals — a reference to Brotherhood figures — and the ‘‘rejection of providing them with shelter and support in any form.’’

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Qatar’s leader, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, fired back in his own opening address.

Tamim called on Egypt to start a ‘‘comprehensive political dialogue’’ to achieve stability. The comment was a veiled criticism of the fierce crackdown on the Brotherhood waged by the military-backed interim government since Morsi’s removal.

The Brotherhood, which denies being a terrorist organization, says the government is trying to crush it as a political rival. More than 16,000 people have been arrested and hundreds killed in the crackdown, and most of the Brotherhood’s leadership — including Morsi — is jailed and facing trials.

Tamim also showed differences with Iraq’s Shi’ite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who recently accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of supporting Sunni militants in Iraq.

Maliki stayed away from the summit. Vice President Khudeir al-Khuzaie, also a Shiite, led Iraq’s delegation.

Addressing the summit late on Tuesday, he rejected Tamim’s charges and insisted that Iraq was a democratic nation that respected the rights of its ethnic and religious factions.

Another split came with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Qatari leader renewed calls for an Arab mini-summit to resolve differences between the militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Abbas’s Western-backed Fatah group in the West bank. Qatar supports Hamas.

In his own speech to the summit hours later, Abbas snubbed the Qatari ruler. He poured lavish praise on Saudi Arabia for what he called its generous financial aid to the Palestinians — and made no mention of a proposal by Tamim to set up a fund to help the Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem. Tamim said the resolution adopted a year ago was never implemented, so Qatar will set it up on its own with $250 million from its coffers.

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