Mubarak, Arafat Meet in Sharm el SheikhUpon his arrival here Monday morning, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat immediately went into talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the situation in the Palestinian territories, the official Middle East News Agency reported.Mubarak and Arafat will review the implementation of the Cairo Arab summit resolutions, which call for freezing normalization with Israel and pledged to provide financial aid to the Palestinians, the agency added. Arafat is also expected to brief Mubarak on the current efforts the Palestinian leadership have made to stem the Israeli aggression in the Palestinian territories, the agency said. The latest cycle of bloody clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces that erupted on September 28 have claimed over 130 lives, mostly Palestinians, and injured more than 5,000 others. And there has been no momentum of halt to the violence so far. Arafat has frequently visited Egypt for talks with Mubarak, who has cultivated friendly relationship with Arafat and played an important role in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, on policies toward Israel. This was Arafat's first visit to Egypt after the Arab summit that was held in Cairo on October 21-22. Arafat Sunday declared that the Palestinian uprising against Israel will continue until the Palestinians can lay claim to Jerusalem as their capital. Israel and the Palestinians have been haggled over the status of Jerusalem, part of their final-status talks that have been in a standstill since July. The Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem, seized by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, to be the capital of their future state while Israel claims the whole of Jerusalem as its "eternal and undivided" capital. |
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