Islamic leaders grapple with Syrian war

— An Islamic summit that opened in Egypt on Wednesday lay bare the multiple divisions within the Muslim and Arab worlds, with conflicting approaches to the Syrian civil war exposing the Sunni-Shiite sectarian fault lines that have torn the region for years.

In Syria, rebels and regime forces fought their most intense clashes in weeks inside the heavily guarded capital of Damascus, activists said.

At the Cairo summit, Egypt’s Islamist leader sharply criticized President Bashar Assad’s embattled regime in his address to the two-day gathering, though he hedged his comments by making only an indirect call for the Syrian leader to step down.

The Syrian government “must read history and grasp its immortal message: It is the people who remain and those who put their personal interests before those of their people will inevitably go,” Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said.

The conflict in Syria has been deeply divisive in the Middle East, pitting a largely Sunni opposition against a regime dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority - a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam. Sunni nations such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have thrown their weight behind the rebels, while Shiite heavyweight Iran is Damascus’ closest regional ally.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite-led government has been ambivalent about the Syrian conflict, offered a more cautious approach. In power for nearly seven years, al-Maliki is believed to be worried that his grip on power could weaken if the Sunni majority in neighboring Syria succeeds in overthrowing Assad and a new Sunni leadership takes power in Damascus. Al-Maliki faces a wave of protests against his rule in Iraq’s Sunni provinces and has had to fight Sunni extremists linked to al-Qaida for most of his time in office.

“Syria suffers from violence, killings and sabotage,” he said and called on the summit to “find an exit and peaceful solution for its conflict.” He called on member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the summit’s organizer, to unite against terror, suggesting that he, like the regime in Damascus, views the rebels fighting the Syrian regime as terrorists.

At least 60,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, where the rebel side is heavy on Muslim militants, many of them linked to al-Qaida. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been displaced, and many of them have found refuge in neighboring nations Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.

Later on Wednesday, another Syria-related event reflected the divisive effect of the conflict there.

Saudi Arabia stayed out of a gathering of Morsi and the presidents of Turkey and Iran on the sidelines of the summit to discuss Syria. Saudi Crown Prince Salman, who was heading his country’s delegation to the summit, left Egypt just before the side meeting was held.

Morsi has been trying to form a working group of the four countries to address the Syria crisis. But Saudi Arabia only attended the “quartet’s” first meeting several months ago.

Egyptian officials insist that the Saudis have not pulled out, and an Egyptian presidential spokesman said Salman left because of personal engagements. The Saudi foreign minister stayed to attend the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit.

But it is widely suspected that the kingdom has quit the group because it could not seethe point of working with Iran, Assad’s most ardent backer, to resolve the conflict there.

Morsi has worked for a thaw in relations with Iran, with which Egypt cut ties after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Egyptian leader gave a warm welcome Tuesday to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad upon his arrival in Cairo for the summit.

Morsi’s spokesman Yasser Ali reiterated Wednesday that any improvement in relations with Iran hinged on Tehran’s policy in Syria.

In Damascus, opposition fighters blasted army checkpoints with rifles and anti-aircraft guns while government forces shelled the eastern and southern suburbs, trying to repel a new insurgent effort to push the civil war into theheart of the capital, anti-regime activists said.

Although bordered by rebellious suburbs that have been affected by fierce fighting, the capital has been spared the destruction that has ravaged other major cities such as Aleppo and Homs.

The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported clashes and shelling east and south of Damascus, saying at least 40 people were killed in and around the city.

The Observatory also reported two car-bomb blasts in the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria.

Information for this article was contributed by Ben Hubbard, Albert Aji and a Syrian journalist in Damascus for The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 02/07/2013

Upcoming Events