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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 16 - 22 November 2000 Issue No.508
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Russia looks in
PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak met yesterday morning with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who is on a tour surveying deteriorating conditions in the region.The two men reviewed the situation in the Palestinian territories, UN sanctions against Iraq and ways of kick starting Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. On Tuesday evening, Mubarak had met with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to discuss the faltering peace process.
Russia, which co-sponsored the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, has traditionally laid low in mediating between Arabs and Israelis, leaving the US with the upper hand in brokering peace. Ivanov began his tour of the Middle East with a visit to Iraq to take in the devastation wrought by a decade of UN-imposed economic sanctions in retaliation for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The Russian minister's tour will also take him to the Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Protection call
THE Palestinian Authority's minister for international cooperation, Nabil Shaath, has said he will press Europe to provide active protection against what he termed the "Israeli siege" of the Palestinian territories.Talking before the opening session of a meeting between EU foreign ministers and their Mediterranean counterparts, Shaath said Israeli violence was destroying the Barcelona Process, the 1995 cooperation accord that created the Euro-Med partnership. Ministers or their stand-ins were likely to focus on economic and social cooperation, rather than politics, AFP reported.
However, a spokesman for French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, whose country presently holds the EU presidency, said he intends to devote the two-day meeting's opening dinner entirely to the Middle East peace process.
Syria and Lebanon have announced that they were boycotting the meeting because of the EU's less than supportive stance regarding the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
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