Arab diplomacy may be standing on its last leg, report Nevine Khalil and Soha Abdelaty It appears very little can be done to head off a war the United States looks intent on launching against Iraq. Nevertheless, 11th-hour diplomatic consultations are continuing in the region in the hopes of averting military confrontation. In less than two weeks, President Hosni Mubarak will be travelling to Berlin and Paris for talks with the leaders of the two key European governments opposing a war. At a time when the world faces "most difficult and complicated" conditions, as Mubarak put it earlier this week, his talks with Germany's Gerhard Schroeder and France's Jacques Chirac will focus on the dangers war poses for the region. This, as well as the severe conditions in the Palestinian territories and the upcoming Arab summit, were the major issues on Mubarak's agenda when he met Algerian President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika on Saturday and Bahrain's King Hamad Bin Eissa Al-Khalifa last Thursday. King Hamad is scheduled to host the Arab summit on 24 March, but in light of the threat of war it appears there might be a change of plans. Discussions are under way to bring the date of the gathering closer and change the venue to Cairo. Bahrain will remain president of the summit. Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher has been holding intensive contacts with his Arab counterparts to work out the convening of a ministerial meeting in Lebanon, the current president of the Arab summit. Lebanese Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hamoud had suggested the meeting while speaking by phone with Maher on Thursday. Later, Maher spoke with the Moroccan and Jordanian foreign ministers. The meeting is set to take place on 15 February. Earlier this week, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al- Faisal called Maher after returning from Washington to brief Cairo on his meetings with members of the Bush administration. Meanwhile, a senior Egyptian delegation, including Mubarak's chief political adviser Osama El- Baz, has been in the US for over 10 days discussing the situation in the region. All the meetings and consultations, Mubarak told Mayo, the mouthpiece of the ruling National Democratic Party, aim to serve security and stability in the region. This is conditional, he noted, on "Baghdad and the transparency of its actions in preventing a war. Iraq must implement UN Security Council Resolution 1441 in all honesty and seriousness to prevent damage." Attempting to stave off the damage on another front, the peace process, Mubarak took the initiative by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for talks in Egypt as soon as possible. The invitation was extended when Mubarak telephoned Sharon after he was re- elected in Israeli elections on 28 January, and comes after a long chill in relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv. Mubarak has often referred to Sharon as not being a man of peace and has strongly criticised the Israeli leader's aggressive stand in dealing with the Palestinians. After two years, Egypt has yet to appoint a new ambassador to Tel Aviv in protest against Sharon's strong-armed policies in seeking to crush the Intifada. But this week, Mubarak told Mayo that he is willing to "discuss [with Sharon] ways to overcome the current bottleneck and return to the road of dialogue and negotiations". He stated that "after [Sharon] won the elections, I found it appropriate to telephone him and deal with him in a new manner". Mubarak further argued that "the only issue [of contention] between Sharon and I is the Palestinian problem which we want resolved justly and permanently." To this end, Cairo has been hosting a series of top-level meetings by Palestinian factions to negotiate a truce between militant Palestinian groups, paving the way for talks between Palestinians and Israelis. US Ambassador to Cairo David Welch said on Saturday that the Bush administration remains adamant in pushing ahead with the road map it designed to relaunch negotiations and to realise a two-state solution. "President [George Bush] has declared his support for the road map and [once] the government in Israel is formed, I think we'll be back to this issue," Welch told reporters after meeting with Maher. But Welch was not so optimistic about the stand-off between his country and Iraq, noting that Washington was doubtful of Iraqi compliance with Security Council resolutions which require it to destroy its alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. "There is no compliance with resolutions," Welch said, "and the pattern of Iraqi response is not getting better." The US ambassador added that although there were no set deadlines for the UN weapons inspectors and inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Iraq, his sense was "time is running out". Welch said that although a final decision on going to war had not yet been made, a peaceful resolution to the issue seemed far off. "A diplomatic solution remains available but we are not confident that the Iraqi regime intends to take it," he said. The British ambassador to Cairo, John Sawers, whose country is a staunch supporter of a US war on Iraq, agreed with the American assessment. "If the requirements set by [UN inspectors] are met in full, then that will be a very important step forward," Sawers said on Sunday. "But at the moment we see no signs of that."
