By Xinhua
Cairo : Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehuld Olmert met and held talks in Egypt’s Red Sea Resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday amid efforts to activate Palestinian-Israeli consultations.
Mubarak and Olmert, who arrived in Egypt earlier in the day, are expected to discuss the latest Palestinian developments and preparations for an upcoming Mideast peace conference in the United States’ Annapolis at the end of this month, said Egypt’s official MENA news agency.
Senior Israeli government sources were quoted as saying that Olmert would ask Mubarak to exert his influence to persuade as many Arab states as possible to take part in the Annapolis summit and at the highest possible levels.
Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority over the text of a joint statement to be filed at the upcoming Annapolis meeting are making progress, Israeli daily Ha’ aretz reported on its website on Tuesday.
According to the report, the negotiating teams of the two sides, led respectively by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former PNA prime minister Ahmed Qurei, managed to bridge a number of differences during their meeting on Monday.
A major achievement of the Monday talks was an agreement between the two sides that the declaration to be filed at the Annapolis summit would not involve the “core issues”, but would concentrate on the process of the negotiations after the summit.
Arab League foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on Thursday to discuss participation at the Annapolis gathering.