Khartoum: Arab leaders yesterday approved the establishment of a peace and security council to address disputes between member states of the Arab League.
Wrapping up their annual summit, the leaders also promised to finance an African Union mission in Sudan's war-ravaged region of Darfur and rejected Israel's plan to draw its borders unilaterally.
Sudan's foreign minister Lam Akol described the two-day summit as "successful in every way", despite the absence of almost all the heads of states from yesterday's closing session.
Nine leaders, including King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, failed to show up for the conference.
"The meeting has taken a number of important decisions with regard to critical issues faced by the Arab world, particularly in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Somalia," Akol told reporters at the summit's joint closing press conference with Arab League chief Amr Mousa.
The resolutions, included in the Khartoum Declaration, issued yesterday were a repetition of past summit resolutions. The only major announcement was the creation of a 5-member Council for Peace and Security.
Diplomats said the idea has been under study in the Arab League for a number of years. Under the proposed system, each of the Arab League's 22 countries will serve two-and-a-half years on the council.
It is aimed to address disputes among the member states. The members may recommend dispatching an Arab peacekeeping force if necessary, Mousa said earlier.
Another resolution was on host country Sudan, which is under increasing international pressure to allow UN forces and monitors into its western troubled region of Darfur, which has been in civil war since 2003. Sudan is accused by the UN of committing atrocities in the region.
The summit declaration said Arab countries "shall increase their military and financial contribution to the African Union mission" in Darfur. Sources said the Arab League may commit as much as $150 million (about Dh550 million) to the AU peacekeeping mission.
The summit also said "the deployment of any other forces to the region requires the pre-approval of the Sudan government," in reference to the recent UN Security Council resolution which said an international force would be sent to Darfur by September 30, the end of the term of the AU mission there.
The declaration reaffirmed the commitment to the Arab peace initiative which offers Israel full diplomatic ties in return for its withdrawal from all Arab lands occupied since 1967. The initiative, endorsed by the 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, has been ignored by Israel, which recently said it will draw its final borders unilaterally.
"This plan is totally unacceptable," Mousa told reporters yesterday. "They cannot draw borders without negotiations with the Palestinians."
Walkout: Gaddafi does it again in Khartoum
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi walked out again in protest from the Arab summit, after other leaders objected to his request to "address" Arabs live on air, sources said yesterday.
During Tuesday night's closed-door meeting, Gaddafi asked to be given the chance to "address the Arab nation live on air about the current developments when the open session resumes yesterday," a source told Gulf News.
The Libyan leader suggested that he needed "two hours" of the summit time. But other leaders refused and told him they were in Khartoum to "do business not speeches," the sources explained.
An angry Gaddafi then left the meeting in protest, accusing "some Arab states of being the allies of the enemies of Arabs."
The Libyan leader walked out from the Tunis summit in 2003 after the leaders refused to accept his proposal for "the creation of a united democratic Palestinian-Israeli state" to be called 'Isratine.'
