PARIS: President Hosni Mubarak urged French business leaders to boost their investment and trade partnerships with Egypt, saying Tuesday that tighter economic ties would energize the plan for the Mediterranean Union that France is pushing for. France is on track to become Egypt's No. 1 foreign investor this year with ?12 billion (US$19 billion) placed in the Middle Eastern country so far this year, according to French government figures. Mubarak urged even more. "Do the commercial ties between Egypt and France really match our historic, political and cultural ties? Mubarak said in a speech at the French employers' federation, MEDEF. France was the No. 4 investor in Egypt in 2007, with ?3 billion in investments, behind the US, Britain and the United Arab Emirates. But then French cement group Lafarge bought Egyptian construction company Orascom Cement this year for ?8.8 billion. French exports to Egypt fell by nearly 10 percent in 2007, while imports from Egypt dropped by nearly 20 percent. Mubarak vaunted Egypt's ongoing reforms to liberalize its economy, which grew more than 7 percent last year, and called on French businesses to view Egypt as "the main gate to Mideast and African markets. Increased trade between the two countries would also enhance French plans for an association between Europe and nations south of the Mediterranean, said Mubarak, who is on a two-day visit to Paris. President Nicolas Sarkozy sees the Mediterranean Union as a plan to link southern European countries to the mainly Muslim nations to the south and southeast of Europe. The union is supposed to be launched at a summit in Paris in July. Getting it running would be the highlight of France's turn as EU president in the second half of this year. Sarkozy hopes it will help build political ties and tackle issues such as trade, migration and security. Laurence Parisot, the director of MEDEF, told Mubarak that the recent hunger riots in Egypt underlined the "extreme urgency of enhanced economic cooperation between wealthy and developing nations. Mubarak meets Sarkozy later Tuesday for a working dinner to discuss the union and regional issues.
