WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama met Tuesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the White House in the long-running quest for Middle East peace that has bedeviled American presidents for decades.
The two men had a “leaders’ meeting” — just the two of them plus note-takers — followed by an expanded meeting of the two delegations that included Vice President Joseph Biden, National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, other national security principals and key staff. They later had a White House working lunch.
Mubarak is not scheduled to visit Congress during his two-day trip.
The Egyptian president told Obama that Arab states would recognize and normalize ties with Israel only after an overall Middle East peace deal is achieved, and not before. He also pressed the Obama administration to move quickly to final-status negotiations for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
This is Mubarak’s first visit to the White House since 2002, when a chill descended on US-Egyptian ties. During the Bush years, the two close allies fell out over Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Mubarak was accompanied by a large delegation including his son Gamal Mubarak and several dozen Egyptian journalists. But, with members of Congress back in their districts during August recess and much of the rest of the city out of town, there was a noticeable under-the-radar quality to the official state visit. Mubarak’s Washington trip had been scheduled for May as part of a new round of Middle East negotiations, but he canceled it following the death of his 12-year-old grandchild, Muhammad Ala Mubarak.
Mubarak met Clinton Monday, as well as US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair.
He pressed Washington to move beyond the confidence-building measures and broker final status talks, according to Egyptian officials. The final status issues include demarcating the borders that would make up a Palestinian state; the status of millions of Palestinian refugees who left the territories that make up modern day Israel; and the designation of the capital of the Palestinian state.
Mubarak’s visit is expected to intensify efforts by Mitchell to lay the groundwork for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in the coming months.
Mitchell has traveled throughout the Middle East in recent months in an effort to get Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab states to take confidence-building steps toward one another as a means to kick-start formal peace talks. The envoy has sought to secure an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in return for the Arab states moving to normalize ties with Israel, such as developing telecommunications, airline and trade links.
So far, he has secured no significant steps from any side.
