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Arafat Determined to Continue Peace Process: Mubarak
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was resolved to continue peace talks with Israel, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Wednesday.
Arafat arrived in Cairo earlier in the day and held talks with Mubarak on ways of ending the bloody clashes in the Palestinian territories. He has left here for Washington to meet U.S. President Bill Clinton on Thursday for the same goal.
During the talks, Arafat expressed determination to stick to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, Mubarak said after the meeting.
"I told Arafat that Al-Aqsa Mosque (in East Jerusalem) must be placed under Palestinian sovereignty," he said when he was casting his vote in the Egyptian parliamentary elections.
He said that he insists that Israel and the United States "not be kept away from this issue,"
Arafat's brief visit is part of the continued consultations between the two leaders on ways of ending the more than one month of clashes between Palestinian protestors and Israeli security forces, which have killed over 180 Palestinians and wounded thousands of others. The latest cycle of violence was triggered by Israeli right-wing Likud party leader Ariel Sharon's provocative visit on September 28 to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site.
Arafat is a frequent visitor to Egypt for meetings with Mubarak to consult and coordinate on the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. As the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Egypt has been playing a major role in mediating the peace process.
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