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Arafat Arrives in Cairo to Meet with Mubarak over Mideast Situation
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat arrived here late Tuesday to hold talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the Mideast situation amid a fragile ceasefire between the Palestinians and Israel.
Arafat, who came from the Spanish capital of Madrid, will pay a two-day visit to Egypt, during which he will discuss with Mubarak on Wednesday on the latest developments in the occupied Palestinian territories and efforts to calm down violence in the region, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported.
Arafat's visit came as Mubarak was making efforts on the Arab and international arenas to stop the Israeli aggression and consolidate the ceasefire, the news agency said.
The U.S.-brokered Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire went into effect last Wednesday, but five Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed in separate shooting incidents which took place since then.
During his visit in Madrid on Tuesday, Arafat held talks with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar on the latest developments in the Middle East and ways of applying the truce and the Mitchell Commission's recommendations.
Arafat reiterated the call for immediate deployment of international observers in the occupied Palestinian territories to monitor the shaky Palestinian-Israeli truce.
He reaffirmed the Palestinian National Authority's committment to peace, saying that the PNA will not tolerate any act against the ceasefire and the Mitchell report.
The Mitchell report, released by an international panel led by former U.S. senator George Mitchell to investigate the causes of the Palestinian-Israeli violence, calls for an immediate ceasefire, a freeze on Jewish settlement activities and Palestinian curb on attacks against Israeli targets.
A frequent visitor to Egypt, Arafat often discusses complicated issues with Mubarak, who has been playing a major mediatory role in the Middle East peace process.
The more than eight months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, sparked by Israeli violation of an Islamic holy shrine in East Jerusalem last September, have left over 600 people dead, most of them Palestinians.
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