Iraq’s enormous debt is also expected to top the agenda.
“One of the gravest dangers and challenges facing our region and the world...is the spread of the terrorism phenomenon which reached some countries in our region,” Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said in a speech on Sunday.
“This necessitates uniting all regional and international efforts to confront them,” he told leaders of the oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) who met in Kuwait on Sunday for two days of annual talks.
Foreign ministers met first, followed by rulers and heads of state who gathered later for a closed session.
Saudi Arabia planned to propose “a new approach” to dealing with Islamist extremism in the region which worsened even before the US-led war on Iraq that began in March.
Sabah said the summit required close Arab cooperation and “in depth study” of regional changes, in particular Iraq, which “would have profound and direct impacts on the whole region”.
The agenda of the annual GCC summit — which groups regional giant Saudi Arabia with Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — has been shaped largely in response to pressures from the United States.
GCC Secretary-General Abdul Rahman al-Attiya said proposals to delete material in educational curriculums seen as breeding hate against the West would be put before the summit.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, carried out by 19 suicide attackers of whom 15 were Saudis, Washington complained that the Saudi educational system instilled bigotry and anti-West hatred in young people.
“This summit is held during very sensitive regional and international circumstances which require the unification of our stance,” Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said.
He said Gulf rulers would do their best “to spare their countries from any threat to their security and stability”.
And amid tight summit security, the US embassy in Kuwait issued a new warning to Americans there to remain highly vigilant in the wake of recent gun attacks on US forces.
The question of debt relief for Iraq would also come under scrutiny.
Sabah, whose country benefited from huge reparations from Baghdad after its 1990-91 occupation, said Kuwait would not favour writing off all the money Iraq owes but would follow the West’s lead, while a Saudi diplomat said the kingdom’s view was to wait and see.
“Kuwait’s stand is not for cancelling all debts because Iraq is a capable nation,” Sheikh Sabah told Asharq al-Awsat daily.
“But what concerns us primarily is Iraq’s stability. When it comes to the debt owed Kuwait, we’ll follow the Paris Club (of major creditors), we’ll prepare for it and accept the decisions.”
The Saudi diplomat added: “We’ll look at the debt and deal with it as it comes. We have no specific programme right now until things are more clear.”
Claims from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE, which are not members of the Paris Club — a group of 19 creditor nations which renegotiates debt — could amount to $45 billion.
Iraq insists the money was given as grants to help it in the war against Iran in the 1980s, but the Gulf states say these were loans.—Reuters