Moussa secretly visits Damascus, confers with al-Sharaa and al-Faisal

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa visited Damascus secretly on Tuesday night and met with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa and his Saudi counterpart Prince Saud al-Faisal and then returned to Cairo, diplomatic sources were quoted by the Lebanese daily al-Nahar as saying.

The sources elaborated that the decision to hold the Egyptian minister's visit was taken suddenly, a matter which made it necessary for Prince al-Faisal to postpone his departure from Damascus until Wednesday morning instead of Tuesday night. The sources did not reveal the objective of the visit.

Observers expect that the visit was in the course of preparations for convening a tripartite Syrian, Egyptian and Saudi summit, especially because a summit as such will alleviate the current controversy over a plenary summit as advocated by Syria and rejected by most of the Gulf states or a mini-summit rejected by Syria and wanted by Egypt, the Gulf states, Jordan and the Palestinian authority.