Mubarak Supports Sudanese National UnityEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak Sunday voiced support for achieving national unity in Sudan during a meeting with his Sudanese counterpart Omar el-Bashir in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh.The two leaders discussed the progress of an Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative aimed at ending the 18-year civil war in Sudan and ways of "reinforcing cooperation between the two countries in political and economic fields," the state-run Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported. Mubarak said that Egypt will do its utmost to bring peace and stability to Sudan, Egyptian Minister of Information Yousef el- Sharif told reporters after the talks. Sudan's Islamic government forces have been fighting with southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which has been struggling for greater autonomy for the predominantly Christian and animist south since 1983. In August 1999, Egypt and Libya put forward the initiative calling for holding a peace conference on national reconciliation in Sudan. Sharif said that Mubarak and Bashir also explored ways of removing obstacles to the movement of goods and people between the two countries in a bid to expand bilateral trade and economic cooperation. He added that the two leaders agreed to continue consultation and contacts on all issues to serve the interests of both nations. Relations between Egypt and Sudan soured in 1996 when Egypt withdrew its ambassador from Khartoum after an abortive assassination attempt on Mubarak in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 1995. Cairo suspected that Khartoum masterminded the murder. Egypt resumed ties with Sudan at the ambassadorial level in March 2000 after Bashir sidelined Hassan al-Turabi, Sudanese Islamic leader and former parliamentary speaker. Egypt accused Turabi, a veteran Islamist who helped Bashir take power in a 1989 coup, of having ordered the murder attempt on Mubarak and having supported the wave of Islamic militant violence in Egypt from 1992 to 1997. Bashir will head to Brussels after his one-day visit to Egypt for a meeting of the least developed countries, sponsored by the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The summit between Mubarak and Bashir had been originally planned in Cairo, but a sandstorm in the Egyptian capital blocked the landing of Bashir's flight and led to the venue change. |
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