Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed arrives in Jeddah for Arab League summit
Prince Badr Bin Sultan Bin Abdulaziz with Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed in Jeddah. AFP
Gulf Today Report
On behalf of President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, His Highness Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Presidential Court, is heading the UAE delegation participating in the 32nd Arab League Summit, being held today in Jeddah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
His Highness is accompanied by a delegation including Ali Mohammed Hammad Al Shamsi, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for National Security; Abdullah Bin Touq Al Marri, Minister of Economy; Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology; Sheikh Shakhboot Bin Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of State; Khalifa Shaheen Al Marar, Minister of State; Sheikh Nahyan Saif AlNehayan, UAE Ambassador to Saudi Arabia; and Mariam Alkaabi, UAE Ambassador to Egypt and Permanent Representative to the League of Arab States.
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Earlier, Syrian President Bashar Al Assad arrived in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah on Thursday for the Arab League gathering, his first since the bloc suspended Syria in 2011.
"We express our happiness and pleasure to be on the kingdom's soil. This summit is very important," Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said after reaching Jeddah earlier this week, adding that the Syrian delegation was "here to make this summit a success".
The main streets in Jeddah were lined with the flags of Arab League member states including Syria, as Al-Riyadh newspaper declared on Friday it would be "the summit of all summits".
The meeting follows a frenetic stretch of high-stakes diplomacy triggered by the kingdom's surprise Chinese-brokered rapprochement deal with Iran announced in March.
Since then, Saudi Arabia has restored bilateral ties with Syria and ramped up a push for peace in Yemen.
Riyadh also played a leading role in evacuating civilians from Sudan when fighting erupted there last month, and it is currently hosting representatives of Sudan's warring parties in a bid to hammer out a ceasefire.
"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has become, in the eyes of all observers, the peacemaker and the icon of harmony, calling for an end to differences and the elimination of conflicts," Kuwaiti writer Jawad Ahmed Bukhamseen gushed in an op-ed this week in the private Saudi newspaper Okaz.
Beyond challenges facing the Middle East, the Arab League summit should also take on issues like the war in Ukraine and "the global economic crisis", Khaled Manzlawiy, the bloc's assistant secretary general for political affairs, wrote on Wednesday in the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
"Indeed, the entire world is undergoing a perilous stage in history as the maps of international relations are redrawn," he wrote, adding that Arab unity can give the region "a voice that is heard not only in the region but also across the globe".
That jibes with Saudi Arabia's recent moves to diversify its global ties, deepening relations with China and coordinating with Russia on oil policy even as it maintains a close bond with the United States, its long-time security partner.
