The flags are flying and preparations continue in Baghdad as Iraq prepares to host its first Arab League summit in decades.<br/> <br />The three-day summit is the first of its kind to be held in Iraq in more than 20 years.<br/> <br />Security is tight.<br/> <br />Last week more than 50 people were killed in Iraq in a wave of bombings across the country.<br/> <br />Against this backdrop Arab economic and finance ministers gathered Tuesday, two days ahead of the official opening of the meeting.<br/> <br />A successful meeting would allow Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to show the country is pulling back from years of violence, months after the last U.S. troops left.<br/> <br />The upheaval in neighboring Syria will dominate the meeting, with Arab League leaders split over how to respond to the violence.<br/> <br />Visiting dignitaries will get a glimpse of an Iraq whose long conflict has ebbed, but also see an OPEC member whose population still struggles with the daily threat of bombings, power shortages and a crumbling infrastructure nine years after the U.S. invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.<br/> <br />Deborah Lutterbeck, Reuters.
