Maher reviews key issues with top Arab diplomats

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met Monday with visiting Tunisian Minister for Foreign Affairs Youssef Al-Mukkadem.

The meeting comes on the eve of the Egyptian-Tunisian higher committee session.

"The meeting was a good opportunity for assessing the results, of the latest Arab League Council session which discussed fundamental issues to be submitted to the Arab summit in Beirut on March 27-28," Mukkadem said after the meeting.

The Minister affirmed that Egypt and Tunisia held similar views on all issues, adding that both states would work together to make the Arab summit a success.

President Hosni Mubarak and his Tunisian counterpart Zine Al-Abidine Bin Ali have a strong political will, reflected on the moves taken by their two states to encourage mutual cooperation, Mukkadem said, calling on both the Egyptian and Tunisian private sectors to help boost this cooperation.

Maher also met on Monday with Secretary-General of the Libyan people's committee for African Unity Ali Treiki.

Treiki said he discussed with Maher promoting bilateral relations as well as the Sudanese issue and the Libyan-Egyptian initiative to achieve national reconciliation in Sudan.

He added that the initiative committee will convene within the coming few days.

Treiki said Egypt and Libya are awaiting the response of the Sudanese National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to the initiative, adding that he met the NDA leader Mohamed Othman Merghani Monday to discuss this issue.

On the other hand, Maher Monday received Yuriy Vornkfov, the UN Secretary-General's envoy for the Gulf war POWs and MIAs' Affairs.

Emerging from the meeting, the UN official said the meeting tackled the issue of some 600 Kuwaitis still missing since the Gulf war and means to get them back from Iraq.

Iraq is still announcing that it is not aware of those MIAs, "which is hard to believe because the Iraqis, who held the captive during their invasion of Kuwait, must find them," he said, adding "it's Iraq's responsibility."

He said that he is consulting in this respect with the Arab governments and other world countries to probe means to convince Iraq to cooperate in this humanitarian affair and has nothing to do with inspection.