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PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak called Lebanese Sunni leader Saad Al-Hariri and Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora to congratulate them on their coalition victory. Mubarak welcomed the legislative election results and what he said was a reflection of the Lebanese people's desire and choice.

Exchanging insults

SPEAKER of the People's Assembly Fathi Sorour and other heavyweight officials of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) intervened this week to mend fences between MPs Alaa Abdel-Moneim and Omar Haridi, reports Gamal Essam El-Din.

Sorour said he regretted that Abdel-Moneim and Haridi had exchanged insults in a way that had harmed the image of the People's Assembly in the eyes of the public. Sorour said the language used in parliament should be more decent and that MPs should be polite and express their opinions without insulting or using foul language.

On Monday, Zakaria Azmi, a senior NDP member and chief of presidential staff, and Kamal El-Shazli, the former minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs, met Abdel-Moneim and Haridi to urge them to bury the hatchet. Azmi lamented that some newspapers and satellite channels used the verbal clash between Abdel-Moneim and Haridi to tarnish the image of the assembly.

On Tuesday, Abdel-Moneim and Haridi shook hands before television cameras and photographers, saying they were keen that the image of the PA remained unscathed.

The clash erupted one month ago when Abdel-Moneim accused Haridi and other members of the assembly's legislative committee of turning a blind eye to the Court of Cassation's ruling which ordered that the membership of 77 deputies be annulled. Haridi accused Abdel-Moneim of trying to extort money from NDP MPs in return for not publishing the Court of Cassation's reports about their membership. "Abdel-Moneim acted like a prostitute, deciding to go to the office of Mohamed Morshidi, an NDP businessman, to extort money from him," said Haridi. On Sunday, Abdel-Moneim, an independent MP, asked Sorour to refer Haridi to the Ethics Committee and warned him that by failing to do so "you will be protecting a whore."

Abdel-Moneim and Haridi are lawyers. Haridi is a member of the newly elected board of the Bar Association.

Wheat ordered out

THE PROSECUTOR-general has ordered officials of private grains importer, the Egyptian Traders Company, to re-send a Russian wheat shipment quarantined over quality concerns. He also ordered the firm to repay $9.6 million to the government wheat buyer for the 52,500 tonne shipment the government has held since May at the Red Sea port of Safaga.

The prosecutor-general ordered a probe following the detection of dead bugs and other impurities in Russian wheat imported by various suppliers and held in ports in Egypt, one of the world's top wheat importers.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry ordered the seizure on Sunday of an additional 56,000 tonnes of Russian wheat at Safaga imported by Egyptian traders but which have not yet been unloaded at the port.

Crash kills 15

FIFTEEN workers were killed and 15 others were injured when a bus carrying 30 labourers crashed into a truck near the industrial city of 10th of Ramadan. The injured were taken to a nearby hospital.