Split at the Arab Summit

Disunity rules under dark clouds of war and hostages

It was designed as a showcase for Arab unity, a chance to stare down Israel and perhaps devise a "positive alternative" to Camp David. Instead, last week's Arab League summit in Amman, Jordan's capital, knocked the notion of Arab solidarity into smithereens. Six of the 21 league members, including Israel's archfoes, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, stayed at home. As though the boycott were not enough, Syria massed 20,000 troops along its border with Jordan. Rattling its own saber, Jordan massed thousands of troops on its side.

All this amounted to a hill of histrionics, since neither side was believed to have any real intention of going to war. But the military face-off between former allies did serve to dramatize how the Iran-Iraq war has split the Arab camp. Arrayed on one side are the so-called moderates, led by Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq; on the other side is the more radical Steadfastness Front, consisting of Syria, Algeria, Libya, South Yemen and the P.L.O.--all of which, along with Lebanon, refused to go to Amman.

The boycott ringleader was Syria, which feared that it would be censured in Amman for backing non-Arab Iran against Arab Iraq. For nearly a decade, Syrian President Hafez Assad has feuded on and off with Iraqi Strongman Saddam Hussein. So great is Assad's anti-Baghdad antagonism that he was willing to risk isolation in the Arab world with his support of Iran. The fact that the summit was in Jordan, Iraq's staunchest Arab ally, also displeased Assad.

In an effort to act as the Arabs' honest broker--despite its own pro-Iraq leanings--Saudi Arabia tried to persuade Syria to attend, and very nearly succeeded. Crown Prince Fahd flew to Damascus shortly before the summit, TIME learned, and personally pleaded with Assad. At first the Syrian leader agreed to come, provided the conference was postponed two weeks. But when he declared his intention to condemn Iraq and to say that the war was the result of collusion among Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and the U.S., Fahd told him to stay home.

Once Syria pulled out, it began using its muscle to line up its boycott allies. It had plenty of leverage with the P.L.O., which not only has forces on Syrian territory but also depends on Syria to keep the peace in Lebanon, the Palestinians' main base of operations. According to participants in the negotiation, Assad was blunt with P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat. "Is it marriage or divorce?" he asked. Unwilling to risk a break with such an important ally, the P.L.O. sent its regrets with "sorrow." Lebanon was also compliant, recognizing that it would be thrown into chaos if Syria ever pulled out its 22,000-man peace-keeping force.

Without Syria or the P.L.O., the summit could not register any real progress on the centerpiece of common Arab policy, Palestinian self-determination. It merely reaffirmed the P.L.O. as "the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" and endorsed "independent statehood on Palestinian soil." In so doing, the conference seemed to reject the idea of a Palestinian state in Jordan, which many Arab observers ascribe to the incoming Reagan Administration.

As Syria feared, the summit took a pro-Iraqi stand on the war, citing that country's "legitimate rights to its lands and waters." Significantly, though, the final communique called on the belligerents "to cease fire immediately and solve their conflict by peaceful means."

Since that plea was also endorsed by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein at the summit, a U.S. State Department analyst surmised that it could be a sign "that Iraq is getting desperate for some respite." In a concluding statement of his own, however, Saddam Hussein said that Iraq would never withdraw until Iran agreed to all its territorial claims. On the battlefronts, in fact, Iraq and Iran each reported extraordinary success, but both were actually still bogged down in positions they have held for weeks. The Iraqis claimed that since the war began Sept. 22 they have killed 5,600 Iranian troops and downed 460 enemy aircraft. The Iranians said they had counterattacked at Ahwaz, Susangerd and other points along the 500-mile front. Iranian warplanes also struck at the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, where authorities have reopened a major oil pipeline to Turkey.

Former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, acting as the U.N.'s peacemaker, returned from successive visits to the two warring capitals with an agreement in principle for freeing 63 merchant ships trapped in the Shatt al Arab waterway. Said he: "The first ray of hope." In Washington, a high State Department official was less sanguine: "It's a bloody low-level conflict, a bit like the trench warfare of World War I. It could go on and on."

Uncertainty also continued to dominate the delicate, submerged negotiations for the release of the 52 American hostages. An Algerian diplomatic team, which has been acting as go-between, arrived in Washington with a request from Iran for "clarifications." Presumably, these related to the legal obstacles that the U.S. faces in meeting two of Iran's four principal demands: canceling American claims against Iran and returning the late Shah's fortune. The other two demands--a promise not to interfere in Iranian affairs and the unfreezing of $13 billion in Iranian assets--are not thought to pose serious problems.

U.S. officials were encouraged by Iran's quiet, businesslike approach. "Their response was nonpolemical, non-strident," said one official privately. But the U.S. was uncertain whether the militants finally had transferred custody of the hostages to the Iranian government, as some unconfirmed reports suggested at week's end. After so many disappointments, the gun-shy American side was keeping silent about the prospects--even as it prepared another message for the Algerians to take back to Tehran.

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