CAIRO, 2 April 2004 — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday postponed planned meetings with the Syrian and Sudanese presidents in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh and returned to Cairo.
Mubarak had been expected to meet yesterday in Sharm El-Sheikh with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Sudanese President Omar Bashir.
Over the last three days in Sharm, Mubarak had met Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, and the kings of Jordan and Bahrain to salvage an Arab summit that was to be held last Monday in Tunis. Tunisia scrapped the summit late Saturday, citing unbridgeable differences over planned reforms in the Arab world.
Yesterday Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa reported a consensus among members to hold a rescheduled summit in early May.
But Moussa admitted differences remained on whether Tunisia or Egypt should host the summit.
In an interview with Egypt’s public Channel 1 television, Moussa stressed that “what’s needed is calm diplomacy” to settle the issue of whether the summit should be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, as proposed by Egypt, or in Tunis.
“We need to discuss the advantages of this or that venue,” added the Arab League chief who will travel today to Tunisia, and then on to its neighbors Algeria and Morocco.
