US administration hails Mubarak's role in ME
The US administration hailed the role Egypt played for realizing peace in the middle east. It described the Egyptian role as helpful and constructive, either with the Palestinians or the Israelis, with the aim of convincing the two sides to implement Mitchell recommendations.
Assistant US Secretary of State for the Middle East and near east affairs William Burns said it is important to realize that the Egyptians, including President Hosni Mubarak himself, played a very active role in the Middle East during the past weeks when he had telephone calls with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.
Addressing the US House of Representatives,Burns expressed belief that Egypt has been playing a very effective role in the region and that the Egyptian-US relations are important.
The US official also said that Egypt sought to bring peace talks to their normal track.
He said that the United States was committed to realizing just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East according to resolutions 242 and 338.
the Palestinian side must exert 100-percent efforts to stop violence and Israel must stop incursions into the Palestinian territories and abstain from killing and demolition of houses and stop other provocative policies, said Burns.
Meantime, Radio Israel quoted Israeli political sources as saying that the new US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer would submit to the Israeli prime minister a us plan for deploying an observers team in the Palestinian territories. However the radio gave no other details of the plan. The radio quoted a US official as saying that observers team would have a limited number and would not have a military nature.
Meantime, the US Washington Post newspaper reported that the US administration intends to dispatch nearly 10 observers mostly from the State Department to make an assessment of commitment by Israelis and Palestinians to the cease-fire. The paper quoted a US official as saying that the team could include an expert from the CIA.