Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will hold talks Tuesday with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and envoys from Saudi Arabia and Italy on the situation in the Occupied Territories.
Palestine TV reported Monday night that Arafat arrived in Cairo, coming from Amman where he held talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah and Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb.
He briefed the Jordanian officials on Israel’s latest attacks on the Palestinians and ways to provide international protection for them, said the TV report.
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.
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 - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
