Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has been invited to visit Egypt, officials said yesterday, despite unease in the Jewish state’s most important Arab ally about the firebrand nationalist.
The invitation was made during a visit to Jerusalem on Wednesday by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, an Israeli foreign ministry official said, without saying when Lieberman’s trip would take place.
Suleiman also extended an invitation to right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is expected to take place in the next few weeks, the prime minister’s office announced on Wednesday.
The invitations appear to mark an improvement in relations that have been on the slide since Lieberman was named foreign minister, with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit pointedly saying he would not shake his hand.
Israel’s foreign ministry said Lieberman, whose hardline stance has raised concerns about the fate of peacemaking with the Palestinians, stressed “the leadership role of Egypt and its president” during an encounter with Suleiman.
“Israel and Egypt will continue their vital cooperation to ensure stability and peace in the Middle East,” the ministry said in a statement.
Egypt, which signed a landmark peace deal with Israel in 1979, has an uneasy relationship with Lieberman, who said last year that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could “go to hell” if he continued to refuse to visit the Jewish state.
Wednesday’s visit by Suleiman, Egypt’s pointman in efforts to try to forge a lasting Gaza truce between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas, was the first by such a high-level official since Netanyahu was sworn in on March 31.
Netanyahu’s refusal to publicly endorse the creation of a Palestinian state has raised fears that Israel’s new Cabinet iss on a collision course with the new US administration, which has vowed to push ahead with the peace process.
Several Israeli leaders have visited Egypt since the two countries signed a peace treaty, the first between Israel and an Arab state, but Mubarak has never been on an official trip to the Jewish state.
Israel has gone out of its way to play down any tension with its Arab neighbor over the new foreign minister, whose Cabinet role has raised concerns over the future of Middle East peacemaking.
Lieberman branded an Arab peace initiative as “dangerous” because it requires Israel to allow the return of Palestinian refugees, and has refused to endorse the 2007 US-backed deal that revived negotiations with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu underlined “the common interests between Egypt and Israel, starting with peace,” after his two-hour meeting with Suleiman.
The talks covered the fate of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was captured by Palestinian militants in Gaza in June 2006, and the situation in the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory that borders Egypt.
Suleiman has been mediating in efforts to arrange a prisoner exchange between Palestinian detainees and Shalit.
Egypt has played a crucial role in recent years in efforts to broker a number of ceasefires between the Jewish state and the Hamas rulers of Gaza.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS