"Recently there was a cloud, but we overcame it," Assad told the daily Al-Jazeerah ahead of an Arab summit planned to be held in Riyadh on March 28-29.

Describing Syrian-Saudi ties as "historic," Assad said relations were now "in a good state, and we hope the summit will usher in a new stage."

Ties between Riyadh and Damascus began deteriorating during Israel's July-August war against Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Syria and its ally Iran. The war devastated Lebanon and left it in ruins . Over 1200 died mostly civilians and over 1 million were displaced.

At the time, Assad lashed out at Arab countries which blamed Hezbollah for provoking Israel's onslaught, in what appeared to be a reference to Saudi Arabia, as well as Jordan and Egypt. He referred to the leaders of these countries as ‘ half men ‘.His comments sparked a wave of anger among Arab countries and underlined the divisions among them. Last week Syrian VP Farouk al-Sharaa during a visit to Cairo said that Assad was not referring to the Arab leaders.

"President Assad didn't mean Arab leaders but small leaderships in some of the Arab countries," but al-Sharaa didn’t elaborate on what was meant by small leadership.

Relations were further strained over Syrian policy in Lebanon in the past few months after the Hezbollah-led opposition launched a campaign to oust the parliament majority backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who has close ties with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi King refused mediation between him and President Assad

The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that Saudi King Abdullah last week refused to respond to an attempt by Yemen President Ali Abdallah Saleh and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to mediate between him and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

The paper quoted senior officials close to the king, who claimed that the king had rejected attempts to persuade him to meet anywhere with Assad or to invite him to Saudi Arabia because of Assad's August 2006 speech in which he called the Arab leaders "half-men."

According to the sources, the Saudi king said: "We will meet him [i.e. Assad] like the rest during the Arab summit, and then he will tell us if we are men enough."

Sources: Ya Libnan, Al-Akhbar