DAMASCUS: Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa will not attend an Arab League summit in Iraq this week and the country’s delegation will be headed by the foreign minister, the president’s office said Tuesday.A short statement released by the office of President Ahmad al-Sharaa did not give a reason why he will not attend the summit but an invitation by the Iraqi government last month trigged sharp political divisions in Iraq.The summit is scheduled to be held in Baghdad on Saturday. Al-Sharaa and his interim government in Syria have been scrambling to establish ties with countries across the Middle East in a bid to ease skepticism about his former ties to al-Qaida and to convince Washington to lift crippling economic sanctions on the battered country. Attending the Arab Summit would have been a major symbolic diplomatic victory for Damascus as well, as Al-Sharaa struggles to deal with opponents in the countries, largely from non-Sunni Muslim minority groups, as he tries to exert state authority across Syria. Al-Sharaa took power after leading a lightning rebel offensive that unseated his predecessor, Bashar Assad, in December. Since then, he has positioned himself as a statesman aiming to unite and rebuild his country after nearly 14 years of civil war, but his past as a Sunni Islamist militant has left many – including Shiite groups in Iraq – wary. Formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, al-Sharaa joined the ranks of al-Qaida insurgents battling U.S. forces in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and still faces a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges in Iraq. During Syria’s conflict that began in March 2011, several Iraqi Shiite militias fought alongside Assad’s forces, making al-Sharaa a particularly sensitive figure for them.