Prime Minister Shimon Peres has promised Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that he would launch an investigation into reports that Israeli soldiers killed Egyptian POWs during the 1956 Sinai Campaign and 1967 Six-Day War.
Peres announced the pledge after meeting Thursday in Cairo with Mubarak.
Peres’ commitment to hold the investigation, which is to be headed by a Israeli reserve army general, represents a turnaround from the stance of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who refused to investigate the allegations.
Reports of the killings of Egyptian POWs, which first surfaced in the Israeli press earlier this year, have sparked of tensions between Israel and Egypt.
The reports prompted the fundamentalist opposition in Egypt to lash out at Mubarak for not doing enough to get Israel to investigate the allegations.
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