Qatar Wants Urgent Arab Summit On Gaza: Arab League

Qatar has requested an emergency Arab League summit to discuss the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the Arab League said on Tuesday, but regional heavyweight Egypt said it favored unofficial consultations among Arab leaders.

The 18-day-old Israeli offensive has exposed deep divisions between Arab countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which both oppose the Islamist group Hamas, and Syria and Qatar which are sympathetic to the group that won Palestinian elections in 2006 and rules the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Cairo had told the Arab League the presence of Arab leaders in Kuwait on January 18 for an economic summit the next day "may pose an appropriate occasion for consultations among them about the situation in Gaza."

Arab League spokesman Abdel-Alim al-Abyad said Qatar made the request for a summit on Monday and that two thirds of the League's 22 members needed to approve the request for the summit to take place.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said Syria welcomed the idea of a summit and would attend.The Algerian state-run news agency APS said Algeria planned to attend the summit, and the Qatari television station Al Jazeera said Lebanon had also agreed to attend.

Lebanese Information Minister Tareq Mitri, however, said the government has not made a decision whether to attend. He said Lebanon had expressed its willingness to attend any emergency Arab summit as long as there was consensus on holding it.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said on Monday Arab foreign ministers would hold emergency talks in Kuwait on Friday to discuss "the continuation of the Israeli aggression on Gaza."

Egypt and Saudi Arabia fear a summit would produce little in the way of results and would make Arab leaders appear ineffective, diplomats said.

Egyptian officials say Qatar and Syria are asking for a summit to embarrass Cairo.

Protesters against the Israeli offensive in Syria, Yemen and Iran have lashed out at Egypt for not opening its border with Gaza to let trapped Palestinians flee the onslaught, which has killed at least 925 people, nearly 400 of them women and children according to Hamas.

Egypt says it will not open the crossing for normal traffic without the presence of the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, whose forces in Gaza Hamas crushed in 2007.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers and Nadim Ladki in Beirut; Writing by Alaa Shahine; Editing by Katie Nguyen)