Mubarak for consultations prior to pan-Arab summit

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has underlined the importance of consultations and good preparations for convening an Arab summit conference so as to "conclude positive results."

He stressed the need to eliminate nuclear and mass annihilation weapons in the Middle East region. In a statement he made on Sunday after he voted for the biannual renewal elections for the Egyptian Shoura council Mubarak added Israel owns nuclear weapons and it has to join a comprehensive international agreement to which all sides should be committed in order to eliminate all mass-annihilation weapons.

Concerning halting normalization relations with Israel, President Mubarak said " I think there is no normalization operations between the Arab states and Israel, except Jordan." Earlier in the day, the Egyptian people gave their votes to elect some 66 new members for the Shoura council out of 397 candidates in some 50 electoral stations. Egypt's minister of the interior Habib al-Adli is to announce the elections final results today.