Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held talks Tuesday with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on the latest developments in the Occupied Territories, reported the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
It said that the two leaders reviewed the latest international efforts to halt the bloodshed in the territories, adding that Arafat briefed the Egyptian leader on Israel’s continuing attacks against the Palestinians.
Arafat arrived in Egypt Monday night, coming from Amman, where he held talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah and Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb.
Mubarak’s meetings follow talks Monday with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, a meeting Saturday with King Abdullah, and talks a week ago with Sultan Qaboos of Oman.
Analysts told the agency that Mubarak was trying to maintain Arab support for the Palestinians without answering their calls for an Arab summit, which the Egyptian leader said would serve no purpose.
Mubarak at one point last month told Arafat that there was no point in calling a summit to address every new development in the regional crisis.
However, the Egyptian president has been very active in presenting the Arab perspective on recent events to the Bush administration, mainly through moves such as dispatching his top advisors to Washington.
AFP said, meanwhile, that Mubarak would also meet Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal and Pier Fernando Casini, the speaker of Italy's lower house of Parliament, in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
A Saudi newspaper reported Tuesday that the Saudi prince was trying to organize a meeting between US President George W. Bush and Arafat in an effort to calm the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Egypt is the first leg of Prince Saud’s tour, which will also take him to Jordan and Syria.
The idea of a Bush-Arafat summit will be the focus of Prince Saud's tour, said both Al Jazira and Al Watan newspapers, which, like the rest of the Saudi press, reflect the official view, according to AFP.
Prince Saud's tour is aimed at "coordinating Arab positions with a view to containing the escalation of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians," Al Jazira said.
He is also expected to inform the leaders of "efforts deployed by Saudi Arabia with certain influential countries, including the United States, to exercise pressure on Israel to help put an end to its aggression against the Palestinian people," the paper said.
However, the Palestinian "ambassador" to Riyadh, Mustafa Dhib, dismissed any possibility of bilateral talks.
"Measures undertaken by Riyadh with regard to the Bush administration were discussed during Sunday's meeting in Jeddah between King Fahd and Arafat, but they did not talk about an Arafat-Bush meeting," Dhib told AFP.
"Saudi Arabia is instead seeking to talk the US administration into exercising pressure on Israel so it applies agreements signed with the Palestinians, under the supervision of the United States," he said.
Bush, who has not met with Arafat since assuming office in January, accuses the Palestinian leader of failing to do enough to quell "violence" stemming from the Palestinians' latest uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation of their homeland - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
