Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is to have talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Tuesday ahead of a new bid to save the Middle East peace process with Washington's aid, a foreign ministry official said Monday.
"The talks will focus on the latest developments in the Middle East and the efforts made to overcome the obstacles blocking the peace process," the official said.
Israeli and Palestinian delegations are to have separate meetings with US officials in a bid to pull a deal out of the bag before US President Bill Clinton steps down and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak faces his electorate.
Egypt plays a key intermediary role in the peace process as the first Arab country to have signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, the basis for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.
Arafat frequently consults with Mubarak on relations between the Israelis and Palestinians, which are threatened by a 12-week Palestinian uprising in which more than 340 people have been killed.
Egypt insisted Monday that the Jerusalem mosque compound, a crucial point of discord, must remain "under exclusive Muslim sovereignty."
Osama al-Baz, Mubarak's top advisor, said "Arabs and Palestinians cannot agree to any Israeli sovereignty in this zone," home to the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest site.
"The Arab and Islamic nation announced very clearly during the Arab summit in Cairo and the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in Doha that only the Muslims have sovereignty over the mosque compound," Baz said.
Mubarak warned Sunday that "nobody can touch the sacredness of the blessed al-Aqsa mosque, for the rights of God cannot be violated."
The two statements served to firm up the stand of the Palestinians before the Washington talks.
In his speech to the opening of the new parliament on Sunday, Mubarak claimed the new Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, was triggered by a "hostile and thoughtless plot directed against the al-Aqsa mosque."
The unrest broke out after Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, a hated-figure for the Palestinians, visited al-Aqsa, which also stands on the site of the Jewish temple, on September 28 -- CAIRO (AFP)
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