Peres to meet Mubarak in Cairo today

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak today meets in Cairo with the Israeli minister of international cooperation Shimon Peres who arrived on Wednesday in Cairo in a visit which will last for two days and his first since he assumed the post of the international cooperation minister in the government of Ehud Barak.

Mubarak and Peres will discuss developments on the Palestinian track and the possibility of resuming the Syrian and the Lebanese tracks and the chances of resuming regional cooperation among the countries of the ME region.

Peres will also meet with the Egyptian minister of economy Youssef Butrous Ghali and the oil minister Sameh Fahmi to discuss means of bolstering cooperation between the two sides.

However, Peres's visit to Cairo is considered an Israeli attempt to convince the Egyptian officials to resume discussions on regional cooperation files among the countries of the region with the objective of restoring back Israeli relations which were frozen under the government of the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.