By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The United Arab Emirates today became the first Arab country to call for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to step down, presenting the idea to a summit meeting of Arab leaders as the only way to avoid an American-led war and the devastation it could cause the Iraqi people.
''The Iraqi leadership should decide to give up power in Iraq and to leave Iraq,'' the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan, declared in a statement issued here, saying he wanted to propose ''a way out of this complicated and dangerous crisis.''
The sheik's proposal -- which would offer Mr. Hussein and his senior lieutenants immunity from prosecution in exchange for stepping aside within two weeks -- jolted a special meeting of the Arab League here on the Red Sea, where leaders of the league's 22 members gathered to debate how best to forge a unified response to the Iraq crisis.
Far from showcasing Arab unity, though, the gathering exposed the profound divisions over Iraq. The league ended its meeting tonight without formally considering the emirates' proposal, prompting an unusually sharp rebuke from the president's son, Abdullah bin Zayed.
''War is imminent,'' he told reporters after the meeting. ''And there is no way we can push the Americans and the British away from it. Unfortunately, the Arabs did not have the courage of talking about it.''
The United Arab Emirates have become a close ally of the United States, providing access to their airfields and buying advanced American fighter jets. Although they are not among the larger Arab states, their president, known as ''the wise man of the Arab world,'' has considerable influence, especially among Arab nations along the Persian Gulf.
Mr. Hussein has insisted that he will never step down, and it appeared highly unlikely that the United Arab Emirates' call would change his mind. The Iraqi foreign minister, Naji Sabri, ridiculed the proposals as ''dirty ideas'' sponsored by the Bush administration.
In a speech to the league late this afternoon, the vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council, Izzat Ibrahim, also vowed that Iraq would defend itself against what he called an American campaign to dominate Iraq and destabilize the entire Arab world.
''Damn this policy of aggression!'' he told the delegates. ''Damn this policy of occupation!''
Nevertheless, the proposal for Mr. Hussein to resign underscored his weakened position, even as leader after leader warned the United States today not to launch an attack on Iraq, saying the consequences for the region would be grave.
''We are still discussing it,'' the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, said at a news conference moments after the sheik's proposal first circulated inside the conference hall. ''I call it an idea. It is not an initiative.''
He added, however, that the proposal had been made in good faith, suggesting that the idea had broader support among some Arab leaders.
''We are sure, knowing the Emirates and its president, Sheik Zayed, that they only care about the integrity of the Arab nation,'' he said.
As the prospects of war have mounted, President Bush and his aides have repeatedly said that Mr. Hussein's departure could avert war. On Thursday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell suggested that the Arab League should consider asking Mr. Hussein to leave, or at least call forcefully for Iraq to comply with United Nations resolutions.
The league ended its meeting with a declaration strongly opposing an American-led attack on Iraq, calling for a peaceful solution and saying that ''the neighbor countries will not participate in any military operation'' against Iraq.
The latter was itself a delicately worded compromise, because several Arab states have already allowed the United States and Britain to mass troops and weaponry within striking distance of Iraq. Those countries, including Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, strongly opposed language proposed by Syria that would have explicitly forbidden such assistance.
Sheik Zayed, who is ailing, did not attend the meeting today but submitted his proposal in a written statement. His son, the United Arab Emirates' minister of information and culture, said Kuwait and Saudi Arabia supported the idea during discussions today, while others expressed support behind the scenes.
In his statement, Sheik Zayed said that once Mr. Hussein stepped down, the Arab League and the United Nations would govern Iraq for a ''transitional period'' until a new government was formed ''according to the will of the brotherly Iraqi people.''
In preliminary talks before the meeting today, Arab foreign ministers and diplomats discussed the possibility of Mr. Hussein stepping down, but the United Arab Emirates was the first to broach the idea publicly.
In a sign of the sensitivity to creating a precedent for calling for the removal of any Arab leader, the league's secretary general, Amr Moussa, refused to discuss the proposal during a news conference tonight.
''We are not concerned with the change of regimes,'' he said testily. ''That is not our job. That's it.''
A senior Egyptian official said that while the proposal by the United Arab Emirates was not debated at the meeting today, ''it will reverberate outside of it.''
The meeting today had been scheduled for later this month in Bahrain, but President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt lobbied to hold it early, hoping to forge a united Arab position. Even beyond the United Arab Emirates' proposal, the meeting instead laid bare long-standing rivalries and tensions among Arab states.
At one point, the president of Libya, Muammar el-Qaddafi, began a long soliloquy on the events that followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, saying that Saudi Arabia's leader, King Fahd, had agreed to allow American bases on Saudi territory and that those bases remained today.
That prompted an angry rebuke from Saudi Arabia's de facto leader, the king's brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, who pointed emphatically at Mr. Qaddafi and accused him of coming to power on the backs on colonialists.
''Saudi Arabia has never been working to support U.S. interests,'' he replied.
Mr. Qaddafi did not relent, saying the entire Arabian Peninsula had become ''an American protectorate.''
Around that moment, television cameras broadcasting the meeting to journalists outside -- and to millions in the Arab world via Egypt's official television network -- went black, and the rest of the meeting was closed.
A short time later, the league issued the final declaration, sidestepping the divisions apparent today.
The declaration welcomed Iraq's first steps to cooperate with United Nations weapons inspections while calling on Mr. Hussein's government to increase that cooperation. It also said the inspectors should be given more time to complete their work -- a position held by France, Germany and Russia, which are resisting American pressure to declare Iraq in material breach of United Nations resolutions.
The leaders also discussed sending a delegation to Baghdad to mediate, but they failed to agree even to that. The president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, said sending a delegation only to Baghdad would put the onus on Iraq, when it should be on the United States.
