US - Middle Eastern five-member summit

The Kuwaiti daily al-Watan on Monday quoted Egyptian diplomatic sources who took part on Sunday in the talks held by Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa with the special envoy of the US president, the US ambassador to Israel, Edward Walker, as saying that the message of US President Bill Clinton to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak pertained to US arrangements to convene a five-member US - Middle East summit meeting to be held by the end of the current month in Washington.

The paper said the Egyptian diplomatic sources indicated that Presidents of Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Israel will take part in the said summit which will concentrate on drawing a coordination mechanism towards reactivating the Middle East peace process on the Palestinian track and to set a date for starting self-determination negotiations for the Palestinians before the end of the current year, under the conditions that these talks will be held on the Palestinian- Israeli borders and with the participation of " monitoring " groups from the US, Egypt and Jordan concerning certain urgent matters including the questions of the refugees, the borders and water.

The paper said the sources continued that Walker has conveyed a verbal message from Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak to the Egyptian president and Foreign Minister Amr Moussa in which Barak called for Egypt's intercention with the Syrian government to find out its viewpoints and demands towards the possibility of resuming negotiations on withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights.