With lavish summit in Baghdad, Iraq signals that it's back Arab leaders wearing traditional robes swept along red carpets through the opulent, exquisitely renovated Republican Palace, which until a few years ago housed U.S. soldiers and diplomats. Bowing waiters offered trays of tea and juice to dignitaries as they stepped out of their limousines. The menu served at the banquet featured dates coated in 24-carat gold as Iraq endeavored to show it was up to the extravagant standards typically set by the annual event. "This is a nation that was distanced, overlooked, boycotted, sanctioned," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a press conference after the event. And now it is back. Little of substance emerged from the gathering to justify the $500 million price tag, a source of resentment among many ordinary Iraqis struggling to make ends meet in the country's laggard economy. Iraq saw it above all as a chance to showcase its Arab identity after decades of regional isolation following the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent ascent of a Shiite-dominated government shunned until now by most of the region's majority-Sunni Arab states. The summit's final declaration made it clear, however, that the Arab League is now dialing down its tough talk on Syria, given disagreements on how to next to proceed and the failure of past Arab efforts to promote a solution. It endorsed the peace mission of joint U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan and explicitly urged against foreign military intervention in Syria. Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby said it is now up to the U.N. Security Council to take decisions on Syria. It is also the Syrian people's responsibility to decide their future, he said, seemingly backtracking from an earlier call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down - a call made before Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the Arab League proposals. "The Security Council is the sole party that has the authority to issue binding decisions," he said. Now the Syrian file has been sent to the Security Council. The question of whether arms should be sent to the Syrian opposition was not raised, and the representative of Saudi Arabia, which has been among the most hawkish of the Arab states on Syria, did not mention Syria in his brief speech. Qatar did not speak at all. The Saudi and Qatari delegates were both ambassadors, among several relatively low-ranking representatives at a summit intended for kings and presidents. Only nine of the 20 countries invited sent their heads of state, and many of those were from countries with little influence over the League. Oman sent the spokesman for its parliamentary speaker. But Iraqi officials nonetheless said they were delighted that all countries had at least shown up, apart from Syria, which is suspended from the Arab League and wasn't invited. "They were representing their leaders, and we're okay with that," Zebari said. The emir of Kuwait was the surprise star, descending from his private jet at Baghdad airport to be greeted on the runway with a kiss on the cheek by Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a gesture that seemed to herald an end to the animosity that has lingered since Iraq invaded Kuwait 22 years ago. The gathering was also a political triumph for Maliki, who has been steadily consolidating his personal power at the expense of his Sunni coalition partners in government. He met each of the visiting dignitaries at the airport, portraying himself for the TV cameras as the architect of Iraq's rapidly warming relationships with Arab states that have long supported his Sunni rivals while accusing him of being overly influenced by Iran. "The source of Iraq's strength and wealth is its Arab identity," he told the summit, which was presided over by Iraq's Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani. The blast at the Iranian Embassy undermined the government's boasts that it had managed to pull off the summit without incident, though it would have gone unheard in the conference room deep inside the vast palace. Zebari and Elaraby both seemed surprised when asked about it by a journalist. A second mortar explosion was also reported in a distant Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad, in a reminder of just how hard it still is to secure the city. There were no reports of casualties. During the summit, at least 100,000 police and army soldiers were on duty, some drafted from other parts of the country, while a curfew kept Baghdad's 7 million residents indoors and cellphone services were suspended. Special correspondents Aziz Alwan and Asaad Majeed contributed to this report.