SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, 27 December 2007 — Egypt accused Israel yesterday of interfering in its relations with the United States as tensions rose over alleged arms smuggling into Gaza during a visit by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Barak was in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for his first meeting with President Hosni Mubarak since assuming the defense portfolio in June, but Mubarak spokesman Suleiman Awad hit out at what he said was an Israeli-influenced US decision to suspend a slice of aid to Egypt.

“Egypt rejects and denounces the Israeli government’s interference in the US Congress’ decision to suspend $100 million in military aid to Egypt,” Awad told AFP. The US Congress last week froze the aid until US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could certify that Egypt was doing enough to stem the flow of arms into the Gaza Strip where the Islamist movement Hamas took over in June.

Awad said the Israeli accusations, increasingly frequent in recent days, were a way of distracting attention from Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank and from the lack of success from last month’s US-hosted peace meeting in the city of Annapolis.

A senior Barak aide rejected the charges of interference, saying “Israel has never acted in that way and will never do so because in the end our joint interests are much stronger than this issue.”

Mohammed Mar’i adds from Ramallah:

Barak was to meet Mubarak to discuss a series of security and diplomatic issues, the head of Israeli Defense Ministry’s political security department Amos Gilad said earlier that the Jewish state will refuse an Egyptian proposal to reopen the peace agreement between the two countries in order to permit the deployment of an additional 2,000 troops in the Sinai Peninsula.

Gilad told the daily Haaretz that “A state that can create order among 72 million of its citizens can also deal with the situation in Sinai without needing an additional troop deployment.”

In Livni’s bureau, officials said that “Israel and Egypt have made their positions on the question of the smuggling clear, and from our point of view the matter is closed.”

However, Israeli sources said that in addition to Livni’s statements, Egypt is upset that Israel has passed on to the Americans a tape allegedly showing how Egyptian soldiers are inactive when smugglers operate nearby.