Jordan, Yemen snub Arab summit

      Jordan announced Friday it would send its Arab League representative — not the king — to head the Jordanian delegation to the Arab summit in Syria. Meanwhile, Yemen plans to send its vice-president to the Arab summit in Damascus, a Yemeni official said on Friday, the latest country refraining from sending its head of state to the meeting.With the latest decisions, nine of the Arab League's 22 heads of state will stay away from the two-day summit, which begins Saturday. Among the absentees are the US's top allies in the region - the president of Egypt and the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The annual summit is frequently plagued by no-shows, often because of personal disputes among leaders. But this year, the differences are sharper - with pro-US nations deeply embittered with hard-line Syria - and the snubs even more pointed. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also announced they were sending low-level delegates, and Lebanon is boycotting the summit altogether. Lebanon's government, Saudi Arabia and the United States accuse Syria of prolonging the crisis between the Western-backed Beirut government and pro-Syrian opposition that has kept Lebanon without a president since November. (09,38)