Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the Arab League, Ahmad Qattan, said Monday on the sidelines of a preparatory meeting in Cairo that he would head his country's delegation to the summit.
Earlier, Qattan made clear the reason for the decision at the preparatory meeting. "We meet today without a president in Lebanon due to the continued and unjustifiable delays in the election," he told the meeting, in which Lebanon was absent. "We look forward to an effective Syrian role in achieving a Lebanese national reconciliation."
The meager diplomatic attendance at the summit demonstrates deteriorating relations with host Syria over Lebanon's worst crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, as well as other issues that Riyadh sees as keeping Damascus in Tehran's lap.
While Syrian officials expected a lower-level Saudi representation and generally appear nonchalant about it, analysts say the absence of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and his high-ranking officials poses political and protocol-related embarrassments to the Syrian leadership.
The oil-rich kingdom's political and economic influence notwithstanding, Saudi Arabia also holds the current rotating presidency of the Arab summit and its head-of-state should hand over the presidency to Syrian President Bashar Assad with a traditional handshake.
Protocol allows a mechanism for handovers, as in previous summits in a traditionally divided Arab world, but the decision to dispatch a diplomat on behalf of the Saudi monarch is expected to determine the lower-level representations of some of Riyadh's Arab allies, namely Egypt.
It has been reported that Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has also apparently decided against going to the summit on March 29-30 because of Syria's alleged involvement in obstructing the election of a Lebanese president.
Cairo and Riyadh have previously said the level of their participation at the meeting will depend on whether Lebanon has managed to fill the presidential seat, which has been vacant since pro-Syrian Emile Lahoud's term expired in November.
Lebanon's Al-Mustaqbal daily Sunday quoted unidentified sources as saying that Mubarak was expected to announce his personal boycott of the summit on Wednesday, a day after the 17th scheduled parliament voting session is due to be postponed in Beirut.
The sources reportedly told Al-Mustaqbal, mouthpiece for MP Saad Hariri's pro-Western Future bloc backed by Saudi Arabia, that Mubarak's decision to be absent from the Damascus gathering was final, "no matter the developments or messages he receives during the week," due to "Syria's obstructive role in Lebanon."
Egypt and Saudi Arabia accuse Damascus of inciting its allies in the Lebanese Hezbollah-led opposition to refuse to elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as president until the ruling pro-Western camp agrees to giving the opposition enough portfolios in a new government to give it veto power on major decisions.
The vote has been postponed 16 times and House Speaker Nabih Berri, whose Shiite Amal movement is allied with the opposition, indicated another postponement of Tuesday's session. The opposition's absence from parliament has been the reason for repeatedly calling off the election assembly, which requires a two-thirds quorum to vote for a head-of-state.
Al-Mustaqbal's sources said that Mubarak may even reduce the level of participation at the summit from prime minister to foreign minister.
Earlier on Monday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said if Lebanon was "not present in its seat or is present with a very low-level representative, and there is no Lebanese president, I think there are Arab powers that perhaps would not be happy with that."
According to Egypt's state-run news agency, Abul Gheit said another delay in Lebanon's presidential vote would result in "weak participation" at the summit. "I fear that the Lebanese issue would negatively reflect on the success of the summit," he said.
Arab diplomats in the Jordanian capital Amman told the Middle East Times that Jordan's King Abdullah was following Riyadh and Cairo's lead and likely to stay away from the summit, but was considering dispatching his prime minister.
Commentators say these countries appeared to have decided against completely boycotting the summit in order to have a presence and a say at the meeting, where most of the 22-member states have declared their participation at the highest levels.
More importantly, they add, Washington's Arab allies did not want to further aggravate the Lebanese crisis and regional tensions by pitting a Saudi-Egyptian axis against the Syrian-Iranian alliance, and thereby affect the issues on the summit's agenda.