Peres-mubarak Summit is on Hold

The possibility of a summit meeting between Premier Shimon Peres and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak seemed to fade Wednesday after indications the day before that a summit was in the offing.

Avraham Tamir, The Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, met with Mubarak in Alexandria Tuesday but apparently failed to obtain an agreement from the Egyptian leader for summit.

Sources in Jerusalem expressed the hope that the summit would still take place in September, as previously anticipated, but they said that any delay in the completion of the arbitration process on Taba might delay the summit.

Cairo was officially mum on the meeting, but Yediot Achronot Wednesday quoted sources in the Egyptian capital that Mubarak had reiterated his position that a meeting with Peres would take place only after the Taba issue had been resolved.

‘RETURNING HOME WITH MANY THINGS’

Tamir, who was scheduled to return Wednesday night from Cairo, told Yediot Achronot that he was returning home in “a great mood.” He said that all the issues he had raised in his talks with Mubarak, including the summit, would materialize. “I am returning home with many things,” he said. “Whatever I wanted to do here, I accomplished.” Tamir would not add any details.

The 10-member Inner Cabinet last week approved a draft agreement with Egypt on the Taba dispute. The agreement, hammered out over several months by delegations from both countries, would send the dispute over the 25-acre strip of Sinai beachfront to international arbitration.

Still to be decided are the three international arbitrators who are to join an Israeli and an Egyptian representative, and acceptance of aerial photographs showing the border posts which Israel would claim should mark the boundary in the Taba area.