Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has urged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to initiate new peace talks with the Palestinians despite ongoing bloodshed, agencies quoted him as saying.
"Sharon has entered history from the wrong gate but he can still enter the gate of history by starting peace," Mubarak said in a pre-taped interview with Israel's Channel Two Television.
"He should not persist in insisting on a complete cessation of violence because violence can never be stopped completely," he said, cited by Reuters.
Mubarak said Israel held the key to the current crisis in the Middle East.
"The solution is in your hands, I mean in the hands of the Israeli government. It should take the risk," he said. "There is no benefit in being afraid."
The Egyptian leader, meanwhile, called on Palestinians and Israelis to return to the negotiating table to solve their differences. "War, killing and violence can only be ended at the negotiating table. Believe me, war has never settled a thing," he said.
Egypt was the first Arab country to make peace accords with Israel, in 1978, and signed a peace treaty the following year.
The interview was recorded before a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and 15 others Thursday in west Jerusalem and before the Israeli reprisals that followed, said AFP.
Egypt denounced the bombing, as well as Israel's retaliation, which took the form of strikes on the West Bank and the occupation of the Palestine Liberation Organization's unofficial headquarters in occupied east Jerusalem.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher last week denounced the Sharon administration as a "gang of assassins," eliciting a sharp protest from the Israeli Foreign Ministry – Albawaba.com
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