By Paul Handley
RIYADH, Jan 16, 2009 (AFP) - Arab leaders will take up the Gaza crisis at an economic summit in Kuwait next week, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said early Friday even as Qatar said it would host its own summit on Gaza.
The top Saudi diplomat made the announcement at the end of a hastily-arranged three-hour meeting late Thursday of leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh.
The extraordinary summit of Gulf monarchies came amid Arab differences over how to respond to the Israeli onslaught -- with Arab heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Egypt opposed to Qatar's summit idea,
The GCC summit was organised following a call by Saudi King Abdullah, while neighbouring Qatar pushed to hold an emergency Arab summit to address.
Prince Saud told reporters that Qatar's summit collapsed because it lacked support from the 22 members of the Arab League.
However a senior official in Doha, said the Qatari summit will take place from 10:00 am (0700 GMT) on Friday and that the meeting would go ahead "whoever is present."
The Saudi foreign minister said that Riyadh supported holding a summit anytime as long as it promised concrete results.
"The venue of the summit is not important. What is important is the resolutions that will come out of the summit," he said.
Saud said the Emir of Kuwait had told the Riyadh meeting that next Monday's Arab League economic summit would open with a discussion of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
Leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to King Abdullah, took part in the Riyadh summit while Oman was represented by Vice Prime Minister Fahd bin Said.
The Saudi monarch called the Thursday summit due to escalating tensions "resulting from the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people," according to the official SPA news agency.
Saudi Arabia has accused Israel of "racist extermination" and sweeping human rights abuses.
Israel's war on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip has left more than 1,000 Palestinians dead and fired up anger across the Arab world, which is divided about support for the Islamist movement.
Noting Israel's failure to abide by the UN Security Council's ceasefire resolution last week, Saud said: "The (UN) decision alone will not stop the fire. But we should build on it and continue in diplomatic efforts to isolate Israel."
Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also criticised Hamas for not cooperating with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose authority is confined to the West Bank since his Fatah faction was ousted by Hamas militants from Gaza in 2007.
The two countries see the hard-line Islamist Hamas as both a proxy for regional rival Iran and a barrier to achieving a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel.
Qatar meanwhile continued to prepare for its proposed summit, although Arab League chief Amr Mussa said in Kuwait on Wednesday that a quorum of 15 countries to hold the meeting in Doha had not been achieved, as only 13 of the 22 member states had agreed to attend.
Several Arab leaders began gathering in Doha late Thursday including the presidents of Sudan, Syria, Lebanon and Algeria as well as the leader of the junta that seized power last August in Mauritania.
But Western-backed Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas has said he will stay away, the Palestinian envoy in Doha, Munir Ghonam, told AFP.
Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani called overnight on Wednesday for Arab nations to reconsider their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Sheikh Hamad proposed "freezing the Arab peace initiative and the suspension of all forms of normalisation with Israel, including the reconsideration of diplomatic ties."
Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania are the only Arab states to have diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, while Qatar itself continues to host an Israeli commercial office.
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