Mauritania to host Arab Summit after Morocco’s withdrawal

CAIRO/RABAT — The Arab League announced that Mauritania would host the annual Arab Summit after Morocco decided not to hold the meeting as scheduled, citing Arab disunity, reports from Cairo said. 

The Arab League charter gives the rotating presidency of the summit in accordance with alphabetical order of member countries. Egypt hosted the event in 2015 and was to be followed by Morocco in April 2016.

Morocco has decided not to host the 2016 Arab League meeting, saying on Friday it wanted to avoid giving a false impression of unity in the Arab world, Reuters reported. 

The annual meeting, which would have been the group's 27th, was initially set for March 29 in the Moroccan tourist city of Marrakesh but had already been postponed to April 7 at Saudi Arabia's request.

“Amid the lack of important decisions and concrete initiatives to submit to the heads of states, this summit will be just an other occasion to approve ordinary resolutions and to pronounce speeches that give a false impression of unity,” a statement from the Moroccan foreign ministry said.

“Arab leaders cannot confine themselves, once more, to simply analysing the bitter situation of divergences and divisions without giving decisive responses,” it added.

Saudi Arabia said on Friday it suspended a $3 billion aid package for the Lebanese army in what an official called a response to Beirut’s failure to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.

The region is riven by the rivalry between Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia and the leading Shiite power Iran. The two are backing different sides in Syria’s civil war and different factions in neighbouring Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia was enraged when Iranians, protesting against the kingdom’s execution of a Shiite Muslim cleric, raided its missions last month — and many countries in the region came out in support of Riyadh.