Arab League Headquarters Returning to Cairo

CAIRO — Arab divisions over the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait widened Monday when the foreign ministers of 12 anti-Iraqi nations agreed to move the headquarters of the Arab League back to Cairo next month.

Iraq and eight of its supporters boycotted the meeting, and Iraq served notice in advance that it would not recognize the decision of the majority coalition led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

Affirming a resolution adopted by the league last March, the ministers announced that the organization’s headquarters will be moved from Tunis to Cairo no later than Oct. 31.

Iraq had been one of the key backers of the earlier decision, which Syria at the time bitterly opposed. The fact that their positions are now reversed is just one sign of the dramatic shift in alignments that has taken place since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2.

The large number of countries boycotting the meeting underscored what many Arab diplomats fear is an enduring division that could ultimately deprive the league, once the most important diplomatic institution in the Arab world, of its effectiveness.

“There have been many crises threatening Arab unity in the past, but none as severe as this,” one Arab diplomat said. “I fear, we all fear, that the league may not survive this test.”

This fear was first voiced last week when Chedli Klibi, the league’s longtime secretary general, resigned without explanation. Diplomats said that Klibi, a Tunisian, had been severely criticized by Saudi Arabia and Syria for failing to press Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

He was also believed to have come under pressure from Tunisia to resist the return of the Arab League to Cairo, the traditional seat of its headquarters until 1979, when Egypt was expelled from the league for signing a peace treaty with Israel.

Despite Tunisia’s objections, it was never doubted that the league’s headquarters would be moved back to Cairo after Egypt’s return to the organization last year. But Iraq, which was chairing a committee to draw up the timetable for the transfer, tried to block the move after Egypt took the lead in opposing its invasion of Kuwait.

Egypt then sought to speed up the transfer and, at Monday’s meeting, won approval for the creation of a new committee that dropped Iraq and included Syria among its five members.

Attending the Cairo meeting was the same coalition that has voted to send Arab troops to Saudi Arabia: Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Morocco, Lebanon, Djibouti and Somalia.

Staying away, in addition to Iraq, were Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania and the Palestine Liberation Organization.