Egypt Reaffirms Support for Regaining of Palestinian Legitimate RightsA senior Egyptian official reaffirmed Egypt's support for the Palestinians in their struggle for regaining legitimate rights from Israeli occupation, the state- run MENA news agency reported on Monday."Egypt strongly supports the Palestinian stance out of its belief in the justice of the Palestinian cause," said Osama al-Baz, political advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, during his meeting with university students in the Egyptian Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria on Sunday. Baz criticized Israel for trying to "delude the world into believing that it is facing Islamic terrorism," calling on the Arab media to expose such an Israeli lie and publicize the Palestinian justice cause against Israeli aggressions. He also urged Israel to freeze the expansion of Jewish settlements, pull out from the occupied Palestinian lands, end acts of violence against the Palestinians, and resume the final-status negotiations with the Palestinian National Authority. On his recent mission to the United States, Baz said that the U. S. administration listened "with open mind" to the Egyptian vision on the current situation in the Middle East, voicing hope that the U.S. would play a "more active" role in pushing forward the Mideast peace process. Baz led a high-level Egyptian delegation to Washington on August 13 for talks on how to deal with the tense situation in the Middle East, which has been witnessing continued bloodshed between the Palestinians and Israelis since last September. Egypt has been pushing the U.S. administration for months to intervene more actively to help break the cycle of violence and resume peace negotiations between the two sides. More than 700 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed since the eruption of the deadly clashes between the Palestinians and Israelis late last September. |
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