Relations between North and South, the new world order, peace-keeping in Africa and the Middle East and combating international terrorism are high on the agenda of talks between Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Jacques Chirac in Paris during the next two days. Mubarak arrived in the French capital yesterday, at the head of a high-level delegation that includes Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, to participate in the 20th "Afrique-France" summit. In an interview published yesterday by the newspaper Le Figaro, Mubarak said that African security issues will dominate discussions at the summit. He asserted that the new world order has caused major problems in Africa and Asia, criticising the bias in favour of affluent nations. Bilateral Egyptian-French relations, despite occasional differences, have been particularly warm this year. Presidents Mubarak and Chirac share an open and regular line of communication, coordinate closely on regional and international issues and deal decisively with bilateral problems as they arise. Also on the summit's fringe, President Mubarak will be meeting with a number of African leaders to discuss crisis situations in the continent as in Somalia, southern Sudan and the Great Lakes region. This is the first time since the summit meetings began in 1973 that an Egyptian president has taken part. "But this is no display of sudden interest. Egypt has always had close ties with, and great interest in, Africa," said Foreign Minister Moussa. In the last two years Egypt has paid ever greater political and economic attention to Africa. It became involved in settling political disputes in Somalia and Sudan and joined a sub-regional economic African group. Moussa also paid visits to several African nations with which Egypt is seeking political and economic cooperation. But the United States and Israel are also paying equal attention to Africa. President Bill Clinton toured a number of African countries in March and Israel is cooperating, economically, politically and militarily with many African nations. The two-day summit, which will open tomorrow, is attended by some 40 heads of African states and governments as well as the secretary-generals of the Organisation of African Unity, the United Nations and the Francophone organisation. Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Algeria will be absent. Mubarak will make a speech to the conference on peace-keeping efforts in Africa. Egypt's unchanging policy is that peace-keeping in this part of the world should be conducted under the auspices of both the OAU and the UN Security Council. "We do believe in the role of the sub-regional African groups in creating their own peace-keeping forces. We also keep an open mind to initiatives made by friendly [non-African] countries. But we still think that such efforts should always be made within the framework of the OAU and the UN Security Council," an Egyptian official said. He added that "this is the right way to make sure that the peace-keeping efforts serve the best interest of the continent without slipping into serving non-African agendas." A French peace-keeping initiative, in conjunction with the US and Britain, will be the subject of discussion at the summit. Another subject of discussion will be economic development in Africa. "Africa is the poorest and least developed continent in the world and this leads to instability. African instability is bound to have a [negative] impact on international peace and security," said Boutros Ghali, secretary-general of the Francophone organisation. He insisted that Africa should be given better economic opportunities. Mubarak's talks in Paris are certain to include Middle Eastern issues. Iraq is one of them. Problems between Baghdad and UNSCOM, the committee charged with dismantling its arsenal of mass destruction weapons, and the US-British threats of a military strike, are bound to be on the table. Cairo and Paris believe that the Iraq-UNSCOM problems should be resolved peacefully. "We are going to talk about the implementation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and the performance of UNSCOM, including the progress report that it should be presenting to the Council," said Foreign Minister Moussa. Progress in Middle East peace-making will be another subject of discussion. Six months ago Mubarak and Chirac issued a joint appeal for organising an international conference to save the Middle East peace process. That call, which met originally with some support, has been all but shelved due to American obstruction. Now that Washington has managed to get the Palestinians and Israelis to sign the Wye Memorandum the odds on holding the conference are even slimmer. Cairo and Paris are not desperate to see this conference convene soon, but they do not want to totally give up the idea, particularly since they have concerns over the future implementation of the Wye agreement. They are also worried about the stagnant situation along the Syrian and Lebanese tracks. Sherif El-Shobashi and Afkar El-Kharadli in Paris, Dina Ezzat in Cairo
