CAIRO--President Hosni Mubarak held three separate talks in Cairo Sunday on means to push forward the Middle East peace process between the Palestinians and Israel, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell. Mubarak held his first meeting with Abbas, in which they discussed the Palestinian point of view on peace in light of the two-state solution, as well as the Palestinian-US contacts to achieve this end, Egypt's official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported. It added that the Mubarak-Abbas meeting also tackled means of providing favourable circumstances for talks aiming to reach the two-state solution. Abbas held talks with Mitchell on Saturday before the latter flew to Egypt for talks with Mubarak on Sunday . During the Mubarak-Mitchell meeting, the US envoy reviewed the outcome of his talks with officials in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan respectively over the past two days, according to MENA. Following a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Saturday in Ramallah, Mitchell said that making peace in the Middle East was difficult. Mitchell is leading indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, hoping to convince them of issues related to the borders of a future Palestinian state and security in the region by September. But Mitchell and the US administration are eager to let the two sides move to face-to-face negotiations even before the four- month ultimatum of the proximity talks. The envoy met the Israeli premier in Jerusalem earlier in the day. Later in the day, Mubarak received Israel's Netanyahu to discuss the same issues, focusing on turning the indirect talks into direct ones. Netanyahu told reporters before flying to Egypt that he would discuss the prospects for direct talks with Mubarak, who has publicly supported the Palestinians' conditions for resuming the negotiations, which they broke off in December 2008 after Israel launched a devastating offensive against Gaza. The Palestinian leadership restated these conditions after a meeting between the US envoy and Abbas in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Saturday. Senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo called for greater clarity from Washington about its position on the new negotiations, insisting that the Palestinians wanted to address the core issues of the Middle East conflict. "Until now, there is no clarity in the US position on a number of issues, especially those related to moving into final status talks," Abed Rabbo told reporters. Input from news agences "The three-hour meeting between Abbas and Mitchell was important, but there are several issues, most important among them the settlements and the situation in Jerusalem, that need more clarity," Abed Rabbo said.
