RIYADH, Feb 26: Saudi Arabia sees no point in holding an emergency summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on Iraq, as proposed by Qatar, a Saudi official said on Wednesday.

“Saudi Arabia thinks that such a meeting would have no use for Arabs and Muslims and would lend nothing new to the Iraq issue,” the official said.

Most OIC member states were anyway discussing Iraq on the margins of the 116-strong Non-Aligned Movement summit in Malaysia, the official said.

Forty-eight Organization of the Islamic Conference members, including Iraq and 15 heads of government, held crisis talks in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, urging Baghdad to comply with UN weapons inspectors.

The informal gathering precedes a planned emergency session of the 57-member OIC in Qatar on March 5.

According to sources at OIC’s secretariat in Jeddah, only 16 OIC member states have agreed to holding an extraordinary summit, contrary to Qatar’s claim that 27 had already consented to such a meeting. —AFP