CAIRO: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to Egypt on March 25 to meet with the so-called Arab Quartet on Middle East peace, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said on Tuesday. Mrs Rice will arrive in Egypt on March 25 and will participate in a day-long meeting of the Arab Quartert in the city of Aswan, he told journalists. The Arab Quartet groups Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Abul Gheit said Rice would first travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories for meetings with officials there, and would do so afterwards to pursue efforts to relaunch the peace process between the two sides.
He said Rice would return to Egypt at an unspecified date in April for a joint meeting of the Arab Quartet and the international Quartet, consisting of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States. The EU commissioner for foreign relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, announced last week that there would be a meeting of the Quartet in Cairo at the end of March or the beginning of April. Abul Gheit also said the new UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, would visit Egypt on March 23 and 24 for talks with President Hosni Mubarak on the peace process and to discuss his own vision as head of the world organization. Nearly four years ago, the Quartet produced a peace roadmap that envisioned an independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel, but the plan has made virtually no progress. Last year, the Quartet imposed a diplomatic and financial boycott on the Palestinian government after the Islamist movement Hamas took power following its shock victory over the long-ruling Fatah party in parliamentary elections. The Quartet is demanding that a new unity government due to be formed any day now renounce violence, recognize Israel and agree to abide by past interim peace agreements. Hamas has so far refused to meet those conditions.
