Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 10-point peace proposal was not discussed during a 15-minute meeting Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens held Monday evening with President Bush, according to an Israeli official close to the talks.
The meeting, which took place during a formal reception Bush hosted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was quickly arranged by the State Department on Monday, in order not to appear to slight Arens, a ranking member of the Likud bloc.
Likud leaders were reportedly miffed that while Bush met for an hour Monday with Vice Premier Shimon Peres of Labor, he had not been scheduled to meet with Arens. Both leaders are in New York this week.
Likud and Labor are sharply divided over Mubarak’s 10-point proposal, which, among other things, calls for Egyptian-hosted preliminary talks between Israel and a delegation of Palestinian leaders. Labor has welcomed the plan, while Likud rejects it.
Peres had reported after his meeting with Bush that the president had words of praise for Mubarak and was “impressed with the progress Mubarak has produced.”
Arens and Bush discussed the peace process in general terms, but did not specifically deal with the Mubarak plan, according to the Israeli official. He said Arens got the impression that the United States wants to advance the peace process in the Middle East and “is willing to make any efforts” to do so.
Bush also communicated to Arens that the administration is well aware of the current political tensions between Labor and Likud.
MEETS WITH POLISH FOREIGN MINISTER
Arens is scheduled to discuss the peace process in a more in-depth manner with Secretary of State James Baker on Thursday.
Baker is also arranging a three-way meeting with Arens and Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid. Israeli officials said the meeting would take place Friday or early next week.
Arens, who is to address the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, has been meeting here with a number of foreign leaders.
On Monday, after Arens met with French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, it was announced that the foreign ministers of France, Spain and Ireland will make a joint visit to Israel. The three are respectively the current, immediate past and next chairmen of the European Community.
Arens met Tuesday morning with Krzysztof Skubiszewski, Poland’s first non-Communist minister of foreign affairs since World War II. The Israeli and Polish leaders discussed the continued warming of relations between their two countries, which now maintain low-level diplomatic ties.
Skubiszewski told Arens that full diplomatic relations between Poland and Israel are “only a question of time,” according to Israeli spokesman Danny Scheck.
Arens reportedly responded by telling the Polish minister that diplomatic relations would lead to greater cooperation in the spheres of trade and technology. Poland broke relations with Israel in 1967, along with most of the Eastern bloc countries.
Last week, Hungary became the first of these countries to restore full diplomatic ties to Israel.
According to Scheck, the Polish diplomat told Arens that he would like to “find a way to commemorate and cherish historical sites related to the Jewish heritage in Poland,” as well as the common heritage shared by Poles and Jews.
Asked by reporters about the Carmelite convent at the site of the former Auschwitz death camp in Poland, Skubiszewski said his government regrets that the controversy materialized and is glad it appears to be on its way to being resolved.
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