Summits in Sharm

---

The Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh hosted three important meetings this week. On Sunday President Hosni Mubarak met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to evaluate developments on the Palestinian front and review the results of last week's visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. On Monday Mubarak met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zennawi to discuss bilateral Ethiopian-Egyptian relations and also to discuss Horn of Africa affairs such as the Eritrean-Ethiopian border dispute and the Sudanese crisis.

Egypt wears both Arab and African hats, and the country is poised to play a greater role in African affairs. On Tuesday Mubarak opened the summit meeting of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD).

Egypt, as this week's summit meetings demonstrate, has an increasingly important regional role to play in both the Arab and African spheres. Relatively more developed than its neighbours to the south, Egypt faces the challenge of playing a more active role in African development. This is especially the case as far as its immediate neighbours, Sudan and Ethiopia, are concerned. Egypt is in a position to help and has expressed its desire to do so in conflict resolution and economic development.

It is in this context that on the margins of the NEPAD summit a number of fringe meetings on Sudan were held. The idea was also mooted of forming a Blue Nile Basin regional grouping that includes Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. The three countries together constitute a potentially huge market and have a combined population of 180 million, which at current population growth rates is estimated to reach 200 million in less than a decade.

For many years tension over access to Nile water has prevailed. Now there is determination by all three that they should collaborate.