Wrong-footed Arab governments on Sunday scrambled to rescue a summit that had been touted as a chance for them to embark on democratic change until host Tunisia announced it was calling it off at the 11th hour.
Egypt, expressing "astonishment and regret" at the fiasco, swiftly offered to host a replacement summit, but Tunisia rebuffed Cairo's attempt to seize the initiative and insisted it still had the right to stage the event.
"The problem has nothing to do with the location of the summit," which was to have opened here yesterday, the Tunisian foreign ministry said.
"Wanting to change the venue overshadows the real reasons" for the postponement, which was due to "serious differences on fundamental issues and future choices," it said.
The foreign ministry said Tunisia had the "right" to host the gathering because it currently held the rotating chairmanship of the 22-member Arab League.
In Sanaa, meanwhile, an official in Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's office said he and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had agreed the summit would be held in Cairo on April 16.
But an Arab League spokesman in Tunis, Hisham Yussef, said the situation was still in a state of flux and could not confirm the report.
"We have not been formally informed of a date," he said, adding that "hundreds of calls" were being made between foreign ministers and the league's secretary general Amr Mussa "on the steps to be taken in the next few days."
Mussa, head of the Cairo-based league, welcomed Egypt's offer to take over and host the summit -- the first formal gathering of Arab heads of state since the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein last April.
The Tunis cancellation statement late Saturday cited "differences" over proposals Tunisia had presented, which "it considers substantial and of great importance as to the process of development, modernization and reform in our Arab countries."
In Cairo, sources close to Mubarak's office said several Arab leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Jordan's King Abdullah II, had approved "in principle" that the summit could be held in Egypt's capital.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was also in agreement, along with the Yemeni leader, the sources said.
Arab foreign ministers who were in Tunis to prepare for the summit said they were stunned when the Tunisian government told them it was indefinitely postponing the event because of differences over political reform.
By late Sunday, many of the ministers had already left on flights from the airport outside Tunis, a press photographer said.
The stakes for the summit had been especially high as Washington was pushing for reform as part of its war on terror, while angry Arab peoples demanded their authoritarian governments do more to defend the Palestinians against Israel and to end the US-led occupation of Iraq.
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