Issue No. 591
Home news
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
20 - 26 June 2002 Issue No. 591 Home news |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
All eyes on Washington
SPEAKING to chief editors on Monday while inaugurating the 6 October Media Production City, President Hosni Mubarak said that during his summit meeting with US President George Bush at Camp David earlier this month, "I discussed the [Palestinian-Israeli] conflict as a whole, and said that the Palestinian state should lie within the borders of the land occupied in 1967." Mubarak denied, however, that he discussed the process of estabishing a Palestinian state, or a timeline for progress in the peace process, with Bush. "Timelines," noted Mubarak, "should be discussed when negotiations begin."
Click to view captionAl-Faisal briefing Mubarak on his talks with US officials As such, Egyptian officials were hoping that Bush's long-awaited declaration of America's vision for peace in the region, which was to be delivered on Wednesday, would follow certain broad lines that reflected the recent consultations between the two leaders, as well as American meetings with various other peace process players.
"We spoke in general terms," Mubarak said of his meetings with Bush, "about the principles which should guide negotiations and which could be the guidelines for Bush's vision for resolving the conflict."
On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher expressed Egypt's hopes that Bush's vision would diverge from the intransigent policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which Maher said "damage hope and peace in the region".
That same day, Egypt's top diplomat relayed a similar message to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who explained to Maher that Washington's proposal of a "provisional Palestinian state" means that not all requirements of statehood are complete when such a state is declared. Powell assured Maher that the US administration intends to announce the establishment of a Palestinian state as soon as these requirements are fulfilled.
Cairo had previously rejected the idea of a provisional state, noting that the term would mean that "today there is a state, and tomorrow it's no longer a state," according to Maher. Mubarak said that the idea of a provisional Palestinian state had not been on the table while he was in the US. "This is the first time I hear of the concept of a temporary state," said Mubarak. "It never came up in my discussions."
Mubarak also dismissed any possibilities that Egypt and the US had agreed to side-line Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. "Arafat is an elected leader and no one can remove him except the Palestinian people," he told the chief editors on Monday. "The Palestinian people are the ones who have the first and last word regarding their leadership. The rumours regarding this issue are subversive propaganda."
Mubarak, who traveled to Amman for talks with King Abdullah, and Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad yesterday, also warned that the wall Israel is building to cordon off Palestinian cities in the West Bank was an unhelpful move. "The security wall will not ensure Israel's security or resolve the situation," he said. "Negotiations are the only guarantee for everyone's security."
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal, on his way back from the US, also stopped over in Cairo on Tuesday for talks with Mubarak. Al-Faisal, who arrived fresh from talks in Washington, told reporters that the viewpoints presented to the US administration by Cairo and Riyadh were "the same".
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
