Mursi meets Palestinian president

CAIRO: Egypt’s new President Muhammad Mursi held his first meeting with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas yesterday amid expectations that the Islamist would be more supportive of the Palestinians than his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.
Abbas said following the afternoon meeting that he told Mursi the “doors were shut to the political process with Israel and there were no bilateral communications,” the official MENA news agency reported.
Mursi had said he would adopt a firmer stance on Israel than ousted president Mubarak, but would respect a 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state.
Under Mubarak, Egypt had tried to mediate a reconciliation between Abbas’s Fatah and the Islamist Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Mursi is a former senior official of the Muslim Brotherhood, which took part in the early 2011 revolt that toppled Mubarak. The group has close ties with Hamas, an offshoot of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood.
Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal was also in Cairo on Wednesday and met intelligence chief Murad Muwafi, who spearheads the reconciliation effort.
Mursi, elected in June, had vowed to support what he called the Palestinians’ “right to resistance” against Israel but he has adopted a more subdued tone since winning the election.