The GCC also urged Syria’s government to immediately halt its "killing machine", and called on arch rival Iran to stop interfering in their internal affairs. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council also pledged to implement comprehensive reforms and strengthen economic and military integration as a first step towards forming a union.
Rulers of the GCC "support Kuwait concerning the Mubarak Al-Kabir port since it will be built on Kuwaiti land and within its territorial waters", they said in the statement. Baghdad claims the seaport, once completed, would strangle its shipping lanes in the narrow Khor Abdullah waterway that serves as its entrance to the Gulf, through which the vast majority of its oil exports flow. Kuwait insists the port will not affect Iraq.
Khor Abdullah is a narrow waterway that separates Iraqi and Kuwaiti shores off
Bubiyan Island where the megaport is being built, and leads to Iraq’s Umm Qasr port and other smaller ports.
Ending an annual summit in Riyadh, GCC rulers also urged Iraq to "implement its international commitments towards Kuwait" in a bid to "enhance trust between the two countries and strengthen their relations". Last week the UN Security Council called on Iraq to step up efforts to normalise ties with neighboring Kuwait, still recovering from the Saddam Hussein-era invasion.
UN envoys are looking for greater progress in helping pin down the fate of Kuwaitis and other foreigners missing since the 1990 war. Property and most of the Kuwaiti national archives also remain missing.
The two neighbors have not settled their border and Iraq still has to pay almost $ 20 billion in war damages. The Gulf is the main export outlet for Iraqi oil, which accounts for the lion’s share of the country’s revenues, and Baghdad has started major work to modernise its outdated ports and plans to build a new port of its own. The GCC also called on all parties in Iraq "to build a safe, united, stable, and prosperous Iraq" following the withdrawal of US troops from the country.
In the statement, the GCC members called on Syria to "immediately halt its killing machine". They appealed for Damascus to "put an end to bloodshed, lift all signs of armed conflict and release prisoners, as a first step towards implementing the (Arab) protocol".
Syria signed the accord with the Arab League on Monday after weeks of prevarication in the hope the 22-member bloc will lift sweeping sanctions against the regime. "If there was goodwill when the protocol was signed, then these steps must be immediately taken," said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, adding the initiative was "proposed to prevent a civil war".
Despite the accord, at least 100 mutinous troops were killed or wounded yesterday, a day after up to 70 deserters were gunned down while trying to flee their posts, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the Syrian regime’s nine-month crackdown on dissent, the United Nations estimated on Dec 12.
In its concluding statement, the Gulf Cooperation Council also called on Iran to stop meddling in the internal affairs of the group’s members. "Stop these policies and practices… and stop interfering in the internal affairs" of Gulf nations, it said, expressing concern over Tehran’s attempts to "instigate sectarian strife".
The Gulf states also called on their Shiite neighbour to "fully cooperate" with the International Atomic Energy Agency, adding GCC members were committed to a Middle East "free of weapons of mass destruction".
The West fears Iran’s nuclear program masks a push to develop an atomic weapons capability, a charge Tehran denies. Saudi-Iranian relations have deteriorated since 1,000 Gulf troops entered Bahrain to help the Sunni monarchy crush Shiite-led democracy protests in February and March.
The ties worsened when US justice officials announced in October that they had foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. And tensions remain high even though the Iranian intelligence chief was in Riyadh last week to clear up misunderstandings over the alleged plot.
On Monday, the last of American troops withdrew from Shiite-dominated Iraq, further heightening Gulf fears over growing Iranian and Shiite influence in the region.
The Gulf Arab nations, with the exception of Bahrain, for the most part evaded the turmoil of the Arab Spring. In Saudi Arabia, however, Sunni-Shiite tensions have risen with several Shiite demonstrators from Eastern Province killed in anti-government protests.
Saudi Arabia, like Bahrain, accuses Iran of instigating the unrest among the Shiites in their country, and fear existing sectarian strife in Iraq could inflame existing tensions within their borders.
In response to the region’s unprecedented upheaval, GCC chief Abdullatif Al-Zayani said the group’s six members agreed to "adopt Saudi King Abdullah’s initiative to make the GCC countries a single entity".
On Monday, King Abdullah asked the GCC leadership to "move from a phase of cooperation to a phase of union," arguing the region’s "security and stability are threatened" and that such challenges require "vigilance and a united stance".
The group also announced the establishment of a development fund worth about five billion dollars for Jordan and Morocco, though it did not clarify whether either nation would join the alliance of oil-rich monarchies.
The GCC has "decided to create a Gulf development fund which begins by providing support to development projects in the Kingdom of Jordan and the Kingdom of Morocco worth 2.5 billion dollars for each," said the statement. "The supreme council has assigned the finance ministers of its members to study the statute and structures needed to create the fund.
Jordan and Morocco are the only Arab kingdoms not in the GCC, which comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and has remained an exclusive club since its inception in 1981. No practical measures have yet been taken to bring them into the group, despite a GCC proposal in May that they both join. Jordan is an immediate neighbour of GCC heavyweight Saudi Arabia and a major trading partner of alliance countries, but Morocco is geographically distant from the Gulf.
The oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf, which have seen entrenched regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya fall, are seeking reliable allies in the region, singling out fellow monarchies.
