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Jordanian King Sends Invitation to Saddam for Arab Summit
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein met on Thursday with visiting Jordanian Interior Minister Awad Khleifat, who conveyed an invitation for the Iraqi leader to attend the Arab summit in Amman later this month.
During the meeting, the minister handed over the invitation letter from Jordanian King Abdullah II, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.
Khleifat, as a personal envoy of the Jordanian monarch, arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday to send the invitation.
It is widely believed that Saddam would not accept the offer, as he has never left Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, triggered by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahaf is said to take part in the gathering, representing Saddam.
Saddam had been invited by his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak to attend the Arab summit held in Cairo on October 21-22 last year, a signal of Iraq's return to the Arab world from which it has been excluded since its invasion of Kuwait some 10 years ago.
In return, the Iraqi president thanked Mubarak for the offer, but apologized for not being able to go to Cairo. Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council, represented Saddam at the summit.
Saddam had not been invited to the 1996 Arab summit in Cairo, the first since the end of the Gulf War.
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