By Xinhua
Cairo : Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said his country has been working for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, the official MENA news agency reported Sunday.
Mubarak made the remarks during an interview with Austrian newspaper Der Standard.
Egypt opened the way for peace in the Middle East 30 years ago and “we (have) spared no effort ever since to push forward the peace process,” MENA quoted the president as saying.
Commenting on a U.S.-sponsored international conference on Mideast peace, Mubarak said listing the Arab peace initiative as reference encourages Arabs to take part in the meeting which was set to be held this fall in the United States.
As for the disputes among Palestinians, the Egyptian president said he regretted the situation in the Gaza Strip, referring to the takeover of Gaza by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) inmid-June.
Terming the Gaza incidents as nothing but “differences between brothers,” Mubarak said it would be settled sooner or later and the priority should be how to avoid a humanitarian crisis in the strip.
Mubarak also voiced his country’s rejection to a U.S. Congress resolution to divide Iraq.
The U.S. Senate passed a non-binding bill late September, proposing to separate Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni entities with a federal government in Baghdad in charge of border security and oil revenues.
Mubarak warned that division of Iraq is the biggest threat to the war-torn country, stressing that Iraq’s future depends on its territorial integrity and the unity of its people.