Al-Sharaa to visit Cairo today

An official at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa will visit Cairo today, just four days from resuming negotiations with Israel in the US state of West Virginia.

The Egyptian official added that al-Sharaa will meet with his Egyptian counterpart, Amr Moussa, who visited Damascus on December 12, just three days before the resumption of Syrian-Israeli negotiations following a cessation of four years.

On December 17 " al-Ahram al-Arabi" reported the possibility of convening a meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad before the end of the holy month of Ramadan in order to draw up a mechanism for coordination of stances between the two states toward the Israeli-Arab negotiations.

Presidents al-Assad and Mubarak hold regular meetings on talks concerning the regional condition. Their last meeting came during the visit made by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to Syria in January 1999.