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Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, is to hold talks with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in Riyadh as part of efforts to improve relations between the countries.
The leaders will hold talks in the Saudi capital on Wednesday, in the run-up to an Arab League summit expected to take part at the end of the month.
"Bilateral relations ... and ways of strengthening them in various fields in addition to regional and international issues of common concern" will be discussed, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported.
The visit by Assad marks a relaxing of tensions between the Syrian and the Saudi government after years of differences over Damascus' links to Iran and Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia organization.
Regional changes
Relations between Riyadh and Damascus had been further damaged in the wake of the 2005 assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister who had close ties to the Saudi government.
Interim reports from a UN investigation into al-Hariri's killing alleged that Syrian officials had a hand in the plot, claims consistently denied by Syria.
With the al-Hariri case now under the auspices of a special tribunal in The Hague, Saudi Arabia is looking to unite regional powers before the Arab League summit in Doha, the Qatari capital, set to take place on March 30.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said that the meeting in Riyadh is an attempt by each of the leaders to address political changes affecting in the region.
"Usually on the eve of most Arab League summits we find that Arab leaders, especially those from Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, try to work out and manage their differences in order to come out on top in the Arab League summit and give a good impression of their regional behavior," he said.
"This time, there is something more serious. The region has been changing over the last few years; there is a new administration in the US and it seems that there could be a radical right-wing government in Israel.
"That regional change is enticing each one of these three Arab leaders to enhance their position in order to be an indispensable party to any decisions."
Palestinian dialogue
In a parallel development, Egypt, with the support of Saudi Arabia, is brokering talks in Cairo between the rival Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah.
The meeting in the Egyptian capital is aimed forming a national unity government for the Palestinian that can eventually engage in peace negotiations with Israel.
An Arab League summit in Kuwait in January ended left Arab countries split over Israel's 22-day assault on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, with Syria and Qatar adopting a more strident tone than Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the war.
PHOTO CAPTION
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak speaks at the opening of the International Conference in support of the Palestinian Economy and Reconstruction of Gaza in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh March 2, 2009.
Al-Jazeera
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