Russian foreign minister in Cairo in coming days

The Russian Foreign Minister Yevegini Primakov will arrive in Cairo in the coming days on his tour of the Middle East which includes Egypt, Syria, Israel and the Palestinian self-rule areas. The visit aims to push the peace process out of its crisis and to create a real Russian role in that process as Russia is one of its co-sponsors with the USA.

It is expected that the Russian foreign minister's discussions with officials in the region will concentrate on the idea of assigning a permanent Russian envoy to the peace process similar to the US and European envoys. This idea came at the request of some Arab countries who want Russia to have a strong role to alleviate the US bias against Arabs in the peace process.

Foreign Minister Primakov will meet in Cairo with the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa to discuss the current situation in the peace process. The discussions will also tackle means of solving the problems of the peace process created by the Israeli policies which violate the Madrid agreement. Coordination with the Arab side to support the Russian movements will also be discussed.