US Should Hear from Arafat: Mubarak

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, March 22, 2002

US Should Hear from Arafat: Mubarak

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Thursday that he has repeatedly called on the U.S. administration to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and hear from him as it deals with Israel.

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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Thursday that he has repeatedly called on the U.S. administration to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and hear from him as it deals with Israel.

"The U.S. administration showed an improvement in this direction," said Mubarak, who is on a visit to the southern city of Luxor, quoted by the official MENA news agency.

Mubarak said he hoped that a meeting would have been held between U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Arafat in the occupied Palestinian lands during Cheney's just-concluded Mideast tour.

An Egyptian presidential source told Xinhua on Wednesday that Arab and international efforts have been underway to arrange a meeting between Arafat and Cheney in the coming days.

"Some Arab states have been appealing to the United States for the meeting, which is considered a very important and useful move to boost Mideast peace efforts and improve the grave situation in the occupied Palestinian territories," the source said, without elaborating on the venue or the exact date of the meeting.

Such a meeting, if held, will be the highest-level face-to-face encounter between Arafat and officials from the U.S. administration led by President George W. Bush.

At a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday, Cheney said that he was ready to meet Arafat at a time and a place in the near future once the Tenet plan was implemented.

He said that the U.S. would remain "very actively engaged" in an effort to help broker a truce between the Palestinians and Israelis.

During his Mideast tour, Cheney met with a joint Arab call for the U.S. to be more involved in helping quell the Palestinian- Israeli violence, which has left more than 1,300 people dead, most of them Palestinians, since late September 2000.

Arafat had been confined by Israel to the West Bank city of Ramallah since early December until he was recently allowed to move in the Palestinian self-rule areas.

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