Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was "a man who only knows war and nothing about politics."
"He [Sharon] does not know anything but the language of violence, and it will not achieve the security he promised the Israeli people."
In a meeting with university students in Alexandria, which was broadcast on Egyptian TV, the president also lashed out at the Israeli intelligence service, telling them: "Don't blame others for your failure" to prevent Palestinian resistance fighters' attacks on Israeli targets.
Mubarak, reacting to an Israeli intelligence report in Paris charging that Egypt smuggles weapons to the Palestinians, said "Israel is still searching for a party to blame for its inadequacies…if there are real Egyptian bridges for the weapons, what has Israel done about that?"
Israeli intelligence accused Egypt, under direct orders from Mubarak, of establishing air and sea corridors to smuggle arms to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“There is something wrong with Israeli politics?” the Egyptin president asked, adding that problems should not be pinned on others, including Egypt and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Mubarak added that Arafat could not stop 11 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence on his own, and urged Washington to play a greater role in the Middle East.
He accused the US administration of bias toward Israel, but said that the Arab countries could not declare war on the Jewish state because of mutual interests.
He stressed, however, that the US remained the sole peace sponsor, and urged the Arabs to set up a lobby to counter the pro-Israel lobby, which according to Fortune magazine is the fourth most powerful in Washington.
“The situation requires America to take a stand. If the Americans hesitate, it is dangerous for the region, for our interests and even for the Israeli people.”
He repeated a call to send international observers to the region to help stop the bloodshed, in which 556 Palestinians and 146 Israelis have been killed.
“Observers are necessary so that all parties will be committed to the ceasefire process and do not attack each other,” he said.
Arafat, who was in Egypt briefly on Sunday on his way home from an Asian tour, noted that the Group of Eight industrialized nations had asked for outside observers in the Middle East in July, saying third-party monitoring would serve the interests of both parties.
The US has blocked attempts to pass a UN resolution to deploy international observers in two occasions, once in March and once this month – Albawaba.com
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