CAIRO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel Sunday pressed on with a tour of the Middle East focused on efforts to lay the ground for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Merkel, who held talks with President Hosni Mubarak soon after her arrival in Cairo on Saturday, had a busy schedule of meetings Sunday including with Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, officials said.
She is due to arrive in Saudi Arabia Monday, where Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and exiled Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal are expected to hold a rare meeting on Tuesday in a bid to iron out their differences.
During her meeting Saturday with Mubarak, Merkel stressed the importance of an end to the violence between the Palestinian governing movement Hamas and the rival Fatah party of Abbas.
Mubarak announced that the formation of a unity government acceptable to Western donors should be imminent.
We are working toward (the formation of) a national unity government. It is about to be finished, unless there are any surprises, he told reporters after the meeting.
Egypt is the chief mediator in the Palestinian crisis but has so far failed to clinch a deal for a unity cabinet, seen as a key step towards resuming international aid to the cash-strapped Palestinians.
Merkel, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, reiterated the West s conditions for lifting the financial boycott.
Hamas has to recognize Israel s right to exist, renounce violence and accept past agreements with the Jewish state, she said.
Both Hamas and Fatah condemned the refusal to end the aid freeze.
Hamas accused the four powers of taking decisions that ignore reality . Fatah said it had hoped that the oppressive siege on the Palestinian people would be lifted.
The so-called Quartet of Middle East diplomatic players met Friday to endorse a plan aimed at revitalizing the moribund roadmap blueprint launched in 2003.
The Quartet itself was divided however, with Russia pushing for talks with Hamas while Washington, the EU and the UN have so far refused to engage the Islamist movement.
Sporadic gun battles between the rival factions rattled the streets of Gaza City for a third straight morning Sunday, despite a ceasefire declared by their leaders.
However, the fighting was more subdued than in the past three days, when 28 Palestinians were killed and around 260 wounded in some of the fiercest internecine bloodletting since the Islamist Hamas defeated Fatah in elections last year.
Merkel is also due to visit the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait for consultations on the fresh drive to rekindle Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The German chancellor was also expected to discuss the political crisis in Lebanon, the surge in sectarian violence in Iraq, Iran s nuclear ambitions and efforts to end the four-year-old fighting in Sudan s Darfur region.
