Tunis, Tunisia ? Arab leaders concluded a summit Sunday by committing their countries to political reforms, but they offered few specifics as they sought to counter U.S. proposals for democratic and economic change.

The annual Arab League gathering, already delayed by two months amid sharp differences about the agenda, also was marred by the walkout of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi on Saturday and the absence of several leaders.

Arab leaders promised to enforce the organization’s decisions, which have been criticized in the past as ineffective and lacking the mechanism for enforcement, frustrating a public clamoring for action.

“We are dead serious about the implementation,” Foreign Minister Habib Ben Yahya of host Tunisia stressed at a news conference.

But the final declarations approved by kings, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers from the 21 member states and the Palestinians were broad and short on details.

The leaders collectively committed their countries to political, economic and social reforms in a response to a Bush administration plan for Mideast reform that has been criticized as brazen interference in internal Arab affairs.

Washington’s Greater Middle East Initiative, which will be unveiled at the G-8 summit of major industrial countries next month in the United States, urges Arab states to promote democracy, human rights and economic liberalization. While the plan has sparked Arab complaints of American meddling, it also has inspired them to draw up their own brand of reform.

The Arab summit declaration promised “broader participation in public affairs,” and it called for human rights and the strengthening of the role of women “in line with our faith, values and traditions.”

“We pledge among ourselves and before God Almighty, then before our peoples, to undertake to work together to take decisions which fulfill these targets,” said the document, read at the summit’s closing session by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa.

Qatar's foreign minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani, right, listens to his Moroccan counterpart Mohamed Benaissa, left; Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Maher, second left; and Egyptian diplomat Mokhless Koteb during the closing session of the Arab Summit in Tunis, Tunisia. The summit ended Sunday with leaders promising some political reforms.

However, Moussa said later that the pledge document, initialed by foreign ministers, still had to be approved by the governments and legislatures of the Arab League members before it comes into force.

He also said that Arabs would not send troops to Iraq after the U.S.-led coalition hands over power on June 30 unless specifically asked by the U.N. Security Council and Iraqis themselves, and even then it was unlikely.

“The Arab countries were not part of the war waged on Iraq. Anyway, I can’t see (Arab troop) participation in the near future,” said Moussa, a strong opponent of the war that toppled Saddam Hussein more than a year ago.

The final summit documents also rejected terrorism and denounced the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers as “crimes, inhuman and immoral practices,” calling for trial and punishment for those responsible.

It stressed Arab support for Iraq’s territorial unity and called on the United Nations to play “a central and active role” for the purpose of ending the occupation and the transfer of power to the Iraqi people.

Moussa declared the summit a success.

“All of us, Arab citizens and leaders, are happy about these positive results,” Moussa said, but he added “this does not mean that everything was solved.”