Baghdad summit, focus on Syria

Six visiting Arab leaders as well as UN chief Ban Ki-moon had arrived in Baghdad on Thursday. Arab leaders will stop short of calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit on Thursday in Baghdad, with the city locked down for its first major regional summit in a generation. With 100,000 security forces standing guard in the Iraqi capital, officials took unprecedented measures to prevent attacks, by closing off a large swathe of the city s roads and mobile phone networks, and shutting down its airport and surrounding airspace to commercial traffic. And with the country having suffered deadly violence just last week, just one attack has been reported since Tuesday s meeting of economy and finance ministers, a low figure by Baghdad s often brutal standards. Six visiting Arab leaders as well as UN chief Ban Ki-moon had arrived in Baghdad by Thursday morning for the summit, which regional officials have pushed to focus on a wide variety of issues, ranging from the Arab-Israeli conflict to jumpstarting the area s economy. The focus, however, has been on Syria, and officials say Arab leaders will stop short of calling for Assad s ouster. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari s confirmed Wednesday evening that the summit of the 22-member Arab League will steer clear of the strong moves advocated by Qatar and Saudi Arabia to resolve the Syria crisis. The UN says more than 9,000 people have been killed in a bloody crackdown by Syrian forces on a year-long revolt.