The spat between old rivals Iraq and Kuwait at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting o­n Wednesday exposed the divisions within the 56-member forum that prevent it from speaking forcefully as o­ne - even during o­ne of its most serious crises.

The OIC, which represents o­ne billion Muslims, ended its o­ne-day summit in Doha, Qatar, without going beyond a sharp rejection of a US design to unseat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and remodel the Middle East.

It emphasised that the standoff should be resolved through the United Nations, but otherwise resulted in no breakthrough effort from the governments of Islamic nation to prevent war.

Current OIC president Qatar said the summit was not ''successful in all measures''. Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Jassem Jabr al-Thani added: ''But I can say there was good progress. There is a consensus and that's very important for the Islamic world.''

But people around the region were unimpressed.

'Same old story'

''It's the same old story,'' said Feroz Mohammed Akhtar, a Pakistani artist who works in a Dubai-based magazine. ''At a time when western countries - France and Germany - are against war and doing their bit to avert it, it is a shame that many of the Muslim countries are facilitating US military action.''

He said that even Pope John Paul II is opposing US plans, but Muslim leaders end up using forums like the OIC to settle old scores rather than show solidarity with a fellow member like Iraq. ''It's better to rename OIC as Oh! I See, because its meetings yield no concrete measures,'' he added.

Adding insult to injury was the presence of o­nly a quarter of OIC members' heads of state at the summit.

''They will never fail to let us down,'' said Shadiah Daud, a political science student at the Emirates University. ''How many ever times they meet, there will be more words than action,'' she added.

In truth, with several OIC members - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar - and Turkey playing host to US military bases, the final communiqu made no attempt to urge Muslim countries to refuse the granting of facilities to the United States.

Instead, it merely stated its opposition to members' active participation in ''any military action targeting the security and territorial integrity of Iraq or any Muslim nation''. Welcoming Baghdad's

cooperation with UN arms inspectors, it issued its ''total rejection of any strike o­n Iraq'' and backed calls for more inspections and a diplomatic resolution of the crisis.

Palestinian concerns

Lost in the din was any attempt to discuss specific proposals like a controversial o­ne by the United Arab Emirates, floated at the Arab summit in Cairo last week, calling for Saddam to step down and go into exile in order to avoid war.

Baghdad has rejected the proposal, which also calls for the establishment of an interim Arab-UN transitional administration in Iraq.

The o­nly positive development from the summit, political analyst Ghassan Al Jashi says, was the return of Palestinian concerns back into the mainstream political agenda of Islamic governments after a hiatus.

''After Iraq hogged all the attention at the Arab summit, the need for a quick resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict mentioned in the OIC summit closing statement is significant,'' he said.

''The real answer to all the problems in the Middle East and terror threats in the world is not regime change in Baghdad but creation of a viable Palestinian state,'' he pointed out.

Still, from the standpoint of the immediate crisis, the OIC summit was a lost opportunity for efforts from the Middle East to evolve a peaceful solution.

According to an official statement, UAE Information and Culture Minister Sheikh Abdullah Zayed al-Nahyan and Iraqi delegates met o­n the sidelines of the summit but did not discuss the exile plan.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad told Al-Jazeera television the UAE proposal is still valid and will be discussed at the Arab League level.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi too suggested o­n Tuesday a UN-supervised referendum in Iraq to pave the way for reconciliation between Saddam's regime and opposition groups.

UAE proposal

But there was little hope for a united approach o­n these issues after the OIC summit got off to an unruly start.

A Kuwaiti minister interrupted the address of Saddam's deputy Ezzat Ibrahim, leading to angry and abusive exchange of words and name-calling with words like ''dog'', ''monkey'' and 'traitor'' - exposing the tension left over from Iraq's 1990 seizure of Kuwait.

The spat came o­n the heels of a row between the Saudi and Libyan delegations at last week's Arab summit in Cairo, where again the UAE proposal was ignored.

Still, some analysts believe the UAE proposal may get more international attention in the coming days.

''The UAE proposal is not new. Some world leaders had proposed it in the past. However, what is new is the adoption of the same idea by an Arab leader who has the courage to say in public what is being said in private,'' said Egyptian columnist Ibrahim Sinbel in Thursday's Al-Akhbar newspaper.

The proposal by UAE President Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan remains controversial. But since there are no active US bases in the UAE, his ''advice'' is being projected as an independent voice in a bid to prevent war.

The Iraqi community in the UAE took out full-page paid announcements this week, thanking Sheikh Zayed for his ''brave and wise proposal and his insistence o­n warding off the catastrophes and damage of war from our people and region''.

The UAE is the first Arab country to officially suggest that Saddam and his top aides step down and go into exile.

Dangerous precedent

While some agree that it was better to sacrifice Saddam rather than expose 25 million Iraqis to conflict, Arab leaders have refused to discuss the idea publicly, fearing that the ouster of the Iraqi leader would set a dangerous precedent.

The Saudi daily Al Bilad said: ''Iraqis alone - and no o­ne else - have the right to change the regime in Baghdad.''

That reaction fits in well into another area of disunity among the Gulf and Arab countries. Saudi Arabia, which floated the exile idea secretly more than two months ago, would not like to see the UAE walk away with the diplomatic accolades if its exile proposal gets support. - IPS