Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held talks with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday in Egypt's popular Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh over stalled Mideast peace process.
The Mubarak-Olmert summit, first of its kind since Olmert became Israeli prime minister on May 4, also discussed Olmert's controversial convergence plan and a future three-way summit that will also involve Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. At a joint press conference after the summit, Mubarak said that Olmert's visit to Egypt is a good chance for peace in the troubled Middle East region.
Egypt and Israel have been carrying out "good cooperation" in solving the Palestinians-Israeli conflicts, said Mubarak, adding that an eventual peace would be achieved no matter how hard it might be.
For his part, Olmert said that he would meet with Abbas for the resumption of negotiations on the roadmap peace plan. Without giving a specific date for his meeting with Abbas, Olmert said that Israel is willing to negotiate with the Palestinians on the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan. The first priority was to negotiate with the Palestinians based on the roadmap plan, said Olmert who has been advocating his convergence or realignment plan.
According to the plan, Olmert vows to draw Israel's final borders with the Palestinians by 2010 by evacuating around 70,000 Jewish settlers from isolated settlements in the West Bank while keeping major ones with or without peace talks with the Palestinian side.
However, Olmert did not rule out the possibility of resuming talks with the Palestinians this time, but insisted that the Palestinian side should meet the requirements set in the roadmap plan before resuming the negotiations.
Under the internationally-backed roadmap plan, the Palestinians are expected to dismantle militant groups while Israel should freeze settlement expansion. Neither side has fulfilled the commitment.
As for the dire economic situation faced by the Palestinians, Olmert said that Israel would take all necessary measures to prevent a humanitarian disaster.
"We will take all measures to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip," he said, adding that Israel will not stop sending humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians are facing a economic crisis owing to an aid cutoff by major international donors after the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) came to power in late March.
During the summit meeting, Olmert and Mubarak also discussed the Friday border killing incident during which two Egyptian policemen were shot dead by Israeli border guards. Olmert told the press conference that his country and Egypt will set up a joint committee to investigate the fatal incident. He said that he had ordered the Israeli security authorities to cooperate with their Egyptian counterparts in the investigation and to do their utmost to prevent such incident from occurring in the future.
On Friday morning, two Egyptian border policemen were shot dead during a firefight between Israeli border guards and Egyptian policemen at the Egyptian-Israeli border in northern Sinai. The Egyptian security authorities said in an early investigation report that the two policemen were killed by Israeli border guards on the Egyptian side of the borders. Their bodies were then dragged to the Israeli side by Israeli soldiers to cover up the action, said Egypt's official MENA news agency.
The Israeli side, however, said that three Egyptian border policemen had crossed the border and exchanged fire with Israeli border guards, during which two Egyptian policemen were killed while a third one fled back to Egypt.
Such incident on the Israel-Egypt border is rare since Egypt is one of the only two Arab countries, besides Jordan, to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, and has long played a role of mediator between the Palestinians and Israel.
In February 2005, Egypt hosted a four-way summit that included Jordan and brought together former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Abbas for the first time.
Political observers here said that though a tripartite summit among Mubarak, Olmert and Abbas might be staged in the near future, the re-start of the stalled Mideast peace process needs more compromises and concrete actions from Israeli and Palestinian sides.
(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2006)
