March 23, 2010 - The Daily Star - Lebanon mulls official invite to Libya Arab League summit

By The Daily Star and Agence France Presse (AFP)

BEIRUT: Lebanon has received an official invitation to an Arab summit to be staged in Libya this weekend but is yet to confirm its attendance amid calls for a boycott, a Foreign Ministry official said Monday.
“A Libyan envoy extended an invitation to Lebanon’s ambassador to Cairo Khaled Ziyadeh in the presence of Arab League chief Amr Moussa,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Lebanon will decide whether to participate or not, in addition to the level of participation during a Cabinet session on Wednesday
Ziyadeh may represent his country at the March 27-28 summit, as top officials in Lebanon have said they would boycott the meeting over a dispute with Tripoli on the 1978 disappearance of leading Shiite cleric Musa al-Sadr.
Sadr – who is still regarded by Lebanon’s Shiite community as a key spiritual guide – vanished on August 31, 1978, and the circumstances of his disappearance are still a mystery. He was last seen in Libya.
A government official told AFP earlier this month that President Michel Sleiman would not attend the summit in response to a request by parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite who heads the Amal movement founded by Sadr.
Beirut last week rejected an invitation to the summit which was received by the Lebanese embassy in Damascus.
The embassy was “not authorized to receive and respond to the invitation for administrative reasons,” according to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry.
In 2008 Lebanon issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi over Sadr’s disappearance while he was in Tripoli with two companions, who also went missing.
Libya has denied involvement in Sadr’s disappearance, saying he left the country for Italy. But the Italian government has always denied he arrived there.
In 2004, however, Italian authorities returned a passport that was found in Italy belonging to the imam. – AFP, with The Daily Star