Empty Chairs

Morocco's King Hassan II was somber as he stared across the octagonal conference room of his palace in Casablanca last week. In almost the same breath in which he declared open a summit meeting of the 21-member League of Arab States, the monarch deplored "the existence of vacant seats" at the first such gathering in three years. The brocaded chairs intended for Syria, Lebanon, South Yemen, Algeria and Libya were empty. Of the remainder, only eight were filled by heads of state. Most notably absent was Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, who was represented by Crown Prince Abdullah.

King Hassan went on to proclaim that "through their feelings and minds, those absent are with us all the same." But the truth was that the deep splits between radical and moderate states that have virtually paralyzed the Arab League for years were as evident as ever. Said Moroccan Foreign Minister Abdellatif Filali: "Maybe this is the end of the Arab League."

At the close of their three-day meeting, those gathered in Casablanca agreed only to send emissaries to mediate between several feuding Arab states, including Syria and Iraq, and to condemn Iran for its role in the five-year-old Persian Gulf war. In their final communique, the summiteers blandly "noted with appreciation" explanations given by Jordan's King Hussein and by Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, of a Middle East peace initiative that the two men put together in February. Even so, to the optimistic Jordanians, that relatively opaque reference amounted to a tacit go-ahead for their peace plan from the rump assembly.

That there was any meeting at all in Casablanca was a minor victory for some of the Arab moderates, notably Jordan's Hussein. Since 1982, Syria, Libya and the other absentee states have blocked efforts to hold any kind of Arab summit in order to avoid a public show of Arab differences.

In June Hussein and Arafat asked that a summit be convened, mainly to bring a halt to attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut by Syrian-backed Shi'ite Muslim Amal militiamen. Moreover, the two leaders saw an opportunity to win broader Arab support for their initiative.

For both men, the major problem has long been the attitude of Syria, which has charged that in seeking peace with Israel, Hussein and Arafat are defying the collective Arab will and following in the heretical steps of the late President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. In Hussein's view, Arab League backing would put pressure on Washington to take a more positive action on the peace initiative. The Jordanians also hoped that Hussein's demonstration of leadership could ease Washington's fears that Syrian President Hafez Assad will stifle the peace momentum.

Even as he prepared to snub the Casablanca meeting, Assad was encouraging another kind of summit in Lebanon. At a Syrian-sponsored gathering in the town of Chtaura, representatives of some 15 Lebanese political parties, organizations and groups, along with about 30 political independents, proclaimed the formation of the National Alliance Front. Its purpose: to win changes in the Lebanese system of representation, which currently favors the country's Maronite Christians and, to a lesser degree, its Sunni Muslims. The Front called for a "special and distinctive relationship" between Lebanon and its dominant neighbor, Syria, and a separation of Lebanon from Israel and "all its agents." A day earlier, as if to telegraph that demand, guerrillas believed to belong to the Amal militia ambushed an Israeli patrol in the narrow buffer zone in southern Lebanon along Israel's border. Two Israeli soldiers and three guerrillas were killed. According to the Israeli military, the deaths brought to 656 the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon since the invasion of June 1982.