Saudi's King Abdullah walks out of opening session of Arab Summit:

"Doha: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz walked out of the opening session of the Arab Summit in Doha on Monday, following remarks made by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. 

Tempers flared shortly after the summit host Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, ended his opening address, in which he said King Abdullah will represent the Arab nation at Thursday’s G20 economic summit in London.

'He is in fact the best representative any one could have,’ said Shaikh Hamad. The Arabs should be part of the restructuring of the global financial system, he said. ‘We should not sit on the sidelines watching.’

Following the speech, the Libyan leader took over the microphone without requesting a permission to speak, a Gulf News correspondent inside the meeting hall said.

'I don’t know why we should be happy that King Abdullah is representing us at the G20. He is a British-made monarch and an American agent,' Gaddafi said, and went on despite the repeated attempts by Shaikh Hamad to stop him.

Frustrated over the attempts by the Emir of Qatar to stop his from talking, Gaddafi looked at the rest of the Arab leaders and said: 'I am the King of African Kings, I am the prince of the faithful and I don’t think my international prestige would allow me to sit with people like you.'

The remark and the subsequent apology by the Emir of Qatar led to an angry walkout by King Abdullah, who few years earlier had a similar spat with Gaddafi. "

Bonus pics [Thanks Diana]:

And to think once he was handsome:

Today's main state-owned Egyptian dailies are headlining President Mubarak's visit to... an agricultural project owned by the army in Sharq al-Owaynat. Because that’s such a more important story than the Doha summit, which he's not attending.

Pettiness is one of the defining characteristics of authoritarian political systems: you see it everywhere, from the arbitrary treatment of political opponents like Ayman Nour to the veiled and actual threats made against rebellious parts of the establishment (such as judges, who had their bonuses and benefits cut when they were rebelling in 2006).