PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak arrived in Qatar yesterday on a rare visit that should mark an end to long years of tension between Cairo and Doha. The tension was essentially prompted by Cairo's unease with the coverage of the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera satellite channel of Egyptian home and foreign related news. It was then aggravated over what Egypt perceived as an unhelpful intervention by Qatari diplomacy in the management of relations between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas movement and in the administration of negotiations between the Khartoum regime and the Darfur rebels. During the past few months tension was contained due to compromises taken by both sides: Qatar abated the tone of the coverage of developments in Egypt and Egypt accommodated Qatar's wish to expand its diplomatic input in regional affairs. Mubarak and the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa will discuss developments on the Palestinian and Sudanese fronts among other issues that will include the potential to expand cooperation between the two countries. Mubarak arrived in Qatar from the United Arab Emirates where he flew in on Tuesday to discuss a range of bilateral and security issues including the security situation in Yemen and the developments of relations between Iran and the West and the impact thereof on Gulf security. Following his visit to Qatar, Mubarak will go to Bahrain today for similar consultations. Mubarak's three-state Gulf tour comes in the wake of a cancellation of a visit that had been scheduled to Saudi Arabia and was annulled at the last minute due to the poor health of its King Abdullah currently receiving medical treatment in the US.
