Palestinian President Yasser Arafat arrived in Cairo Tuesday night for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the conflict in the Palestinian territories, Mubarak's office told AFP. Meanwhile, the Israeli security cabinet will meet Wednesday to review the ceasefire with the Palestinians.
Arafat will meet the Egyptian leader on Wednesday morning at the Mediterranean resort of Burg Al Arab, west of Alexandria, the source said.
The Palestinian president, who arrived from meetings in Madrid with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, was met at the airport by Mubarak political advisor Ossama Al Baz. He was accompanied by senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat and by Mohammed Dahlan, chief of preventive security in the Gaza Strip.
Earlier in Madrid, Arafat called yet again for the urgent dispatch of international observers to monitor a shaky seven-day Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire that has failed to stop bloodshed.
He also promised to "do all that we can to continue along the path of observing the ceasefire."
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will on Wednesday convene the security cabinet to reassess the ceasefire following two deadly attacks on Jewish settlers in the West Bank on Monday.
At a meeting of the inner security cabinet Tuesday, there was no agreement on whether to announce that Israel would give another extension to attempts to consolidate the ceasefire. However, those present seemd to feel that the "policy of restraint" was failing, said Haaretz.
Senior Israeli political and military officials are worried that a "creeping erosion" of the ceasefire provisions hammered out by CIA Director George Tenet could develop into a total collapse of the ceasefire.
Haaretz sources said the Palestinians were not sticking to any of the agreements and were "making a mockery of us and the Americans."
But Arafat in Spain pointed to the killing of an elderly Palestinian and a young boy, asking whether those people had been combatants engaged in attacking Israel.
Palestinian media Wednesday blamed settlers for the intentional killing of a 70-year-old woman struck by an Israeli car near the West Bank town of Qalqilya on Tuesday.
Palestinian officials had said Tuesday that the death of the woman, hit while riding a donkey, was accidental and not intentional. But Palestinian newspapers wrote Wednesday that the woman was killed deliberately – Albawaba.com
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