BAGHDAD — Drought and uprisings are threatening to undermine the Middle East’s economy, Arab officials said Tuesday as they discussed plans to boost the region’s stability at the start of a key summit in Baghdad.
For the first time in a generation, leaders from 21 states gathered in Iraq for the Arab League’s annual summit. Iraq is hoping the summit will better integrate its Shiite-led government into the Sunni-dominated Arab world, and it has deployed thousands of soldiers and police across Baghdad to prevent insurgent threats from upending it.
Economic ministers tentatively agreed to cooperate on proposals for tourism and to deal with water shortages and natural disasters. The proposals, put forward at the summit’s opening meeting, still need to be approved by the rulers and heads of government on the final day of the gathering Thursday.
“We are suffering mainly from the lack of finance and some technical problems,” Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said at the economic ministers’ meeting.
Iraq is spending at least $500 million to host the summit, and officials believe it’s an investment for the country’s future.
Finding ways to end the yearlong bloodshed in Syria is the top priority for the League, which is considering a slightly more aggressive plan than the one suggested by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan and accepted Tuesday by President Bashar Assad’s regime.
A draft of the League resolution calls for the “immediate release of all prisoners detained” during the uprising against Assad’s regime, while Annan’s plan calls for the pace and scale of release of detainees to be speeded up.
The League resolution also termed fighting in Baba Amr, a former rebel stronghold in the key city of Homs, as a massacre whose perpetrators must be charged with crimes against humanity.
The resolution is expected to be discussed today by League foreign ministers in Baghdad.
