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Cairo (AFP) May 5, 2011 An Arab summit due to be held in Baghdad next week has been postponed until March 2012, the Arab League chief and Iraq's foreign minister announced on Thursday, after Gulf calls for it to be scrapped. "It has been decided to postpone the Baghdad summit until March 2012 at the request of the Republic of Iraq which will retain the right to host the (next) summit," said the 22-member League after talks between its secretary general Amr Mussa and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. The decision "takes account of current events in several Arab countries," it said in a statement, adding that the postponement was aimed at ensuring a "heavy presence and representation at high levels." Iraq has spent 450 million dollars preparing to host its first regular Arab summit since 1978, as Baghdad seeks to reassert its diplomatic position in the region. The country hosted an extraordinary summit in 1990. The next summit had been due in March but was already put off due to the "Arab Spring" of unrest that has swept the region, toppling regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and stoking tensions between mainly Shiite Iraq and Sunni-ruled Arab states in the Gulf. In April, Bahrain said Gulf states wanted the Baghdad summit cancelled altogether after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki charged the crushing of Shiite-led protests in the Sunni-ruled kingdom was stoking sectarian tensions. Saudi Arabia, whose state religion is a severely puritanical version of Sunni Islam that considers Shiites heretics, led a joint military force into Bahrain at Manama's request to free up troops to quell the pro-democracy protests. Riyadh and other capitals in the Gulf accused Shiite Iran of fomenting the protests in Bahrain. Apart from Bahrain, the other oil-rich monarchies in the Gulf have not experienced the level of unrest which rocked Syria and North African states, although they are keeping a close watch on dissidents and rights activists.
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