TUNIS: The last Arab League summit looks like it will go the way of Arab gatherings that leave behind little more than memories of quarrels.

It was meant to be different - perhaps they all were. But at this summit leaders were to go beyond the usual condemnation of Israel to agree reforms at home.

They did. Like promoting "broader participation in public affairs" without advocating free and fair elections. They agreed to promote "responsible freedom of expression" without saying what "responsible" was and who would take responsibility for ensuring, even enforcing it.

The summit produced statements that spoke of strengthening the role of Arab women, but made this conditional on "our faith, values and traditions". Women have for long been at the mercy of conservative interpreters of these values.

"We pledge among ourselves and before God almighty, then before our peoples, to undertake to work together to take decisions which fulfil these targets," the 22- member Arab League said in its final communiqui.

The reform proposal provides for stronger adherence to laws already in place, including Islamic law in some countries. That was sign enough that no Arab nation will be called on to overhaul its system.

Wrangling over this agreement on reform had forced a two-month postponement of the summit, due earlier in Tunis in late March.

"We are talking about problems that require real change in society - its position toward women, its position towards democracy, the role of civil society," Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath said at the meeting.

"They need a dynamic in order for them to happen and the dynamic is not just monitoring by the Arab League," he said. "The hope is that when the league approves of this as an Arab policy, this will encourage individual states to follow through with their reform programmes." Tunisia said Arab states needed time to establish credibility over their desire for change. "We are deadly serious about the implementation of that paper (on reforms)," said Tunisian foreign minister Habib Ben Yahya.

He dismissed the idea that the document on reform was prepared under pressure from outside. "It is not at the request of anybody. It has been done in a way that is a home-grown process." The reform issue has created tension between the Arab region and the United States since last winter, when the Bush administration said it would issue a Greater Middle East Initiative to push democracy - seen as the best antidote to militancy - across the Arab and Muslim world.

Leaders, people analysts, and commentators are asking already just what difference the Arab declaration on reform in response to the US demands will make on the ground.

The summit that ended last weekend became noteworthy, though, for some things it did not do. For the first time at such a gathering leaders did not criticise the United States by name. That silence comes when the world has been critical of the United States as never before.

They did not ask for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign soldiers from Iraq - at a time when much of the world is asking for it.

What they did do was to condemn violence against Israeli and Palestinian civilians alike. In this they were with world opinion, but commentators were asking if it takes a summit to agree on something like this.

Many believe that if the 50-point communiqui adopted at the last Arab summit meeting was not implemented, nor will this, and that the Tunis summit will go down as another gathering of words and no action.

"The bottom line is that all the Arabs agree they don't want real reform, but they're very divided over how to react to the United States," says Michael Young, a political analyst in Lebanon.

Marwan Bishara, a political analyst who lectures in France says that waiting for the Algiers summit next year "to deliver the goods, if the result of the Tunis summit is anything to go by, will be like waiting for Godot."

That did not stop Arab leaders from saying they had made history. Delegates said it was an accomplishment that the meeting had taken place at all, given the chaos in the Middle East and the dizzying rush of developments there.

The delegates took care to draw the purdah over quarrels. Only a brief opening and closing session were shown live, and the rest of the meeting took place behind closed doors.

The aim was to prevent Arab leaders washing their dirty linen in public, a diplomat said. That is just what happened last year at Egypt's Red Sea resort Sharm el-Sheikh when Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi engaged in an open spat.

But the curtains this time did not stop differences surfacing later. "What's the significance of this Arab gathering?" Qadhafi said at a news conference outside. "I am disgusted."

Qadhafi left in a huff, as he often does. One other leader walked out of a summit meeting, four left before the summit ended, and eight never turned up. -Dawn/The InterPress News Service.