Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah opened the Arab League summit in Riyadh on Wednesday with a rare and emotional acknowledgment of the desperate state of the Arab world and the League’s failure to forge unity or address the region?s accumulating troubles.

The Saudi leader, who has been on a diplomatic drive to mediate in some of the region’s crises, also lamented the foreign interventions in the region, referring to the “illegitimate” occupation of Iraq and calling for a lifting of the international blockade on Palestinians.