Arab leaders postponed a long-awaited summit just 36 hours before they had planned to meet because of differences over proposals to expand democracy in the Arab world, the Tunisian Foreign Ministry said.
"It became clear that there was a variance of positions on... proposals related to fundamental issues on modernisation, democratic reform, human rights and the rights of women," the ministry said in a statement.
Tunisia announced the indefinite postponement after Arab foreign ministers spent yesterday afternoon looking at democratic reform proposals submitted by five Arab governments -- Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Qatar and Tunisia.
The summit was to take up the subject of democratic reform after the United States launched its own Greater Middle East Initiative, widely criticised in the Arab world as a foreign intrusion which overlooks the occupation of Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Earlier the organisers of the summit suffered a blow when two Arab Gulf states decided to send low-level delegations to the meeting. That announcement came after similar decisions by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Organisers had earlier reported that preparatory meetings had made progress on Iraq and a joint response to Washington's campaign for democracy in the Middle East.
Iraq and the Palestinian territories were among top issues for the summit, along with reform of the Arab League and how to phrase a document committing the 22 Arab League members to some measure of domestic reform.