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Bush And Mubarak Discuss Middle East
WASHINGTON, April 2 (News Agencies) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and President George W. Bush vowed Monday to cooperate on forging Middle East peace, but the U.S. leader gave no sign he would take a more active role in ending violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
"We're very engaged in the Middle East and will remain so," Bush said during a joint Oval Office appearance after the closed-door meeting with Mubarak, the first Arab leader to meet with the president since he took office January 20th.
"The role for strong countries like ourselves and Egypt is to encourage, first, the violence to end, and secondly, for discussions to begin again. And I'm very optimistic and hopeful that we will be able to achieve that," he added.
Mubarak, who chided in an interview released Saturday that the U.S. approach to the region cannot be "hands off," said he retained "great hopes" that Bush would exert "maximum effort" to help foster an end to some six months of deadly clashes.
"He is committed to work for peace," assured the Egyptian president, whose visit came just two weeks after Bush received Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and a week before Jordanian King Abdullah II comes to town.
Bush also indicated that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had discussed the situation in the Middle East with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon early Monday, and aides say Bush himself has made over two dozen calls to regional leaders.
Powell and Sharon discussed "the overall situation, the steps that we were looking for between the parties to re-establish calm, to re-establish some peace and to get back on track with direct discussions," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
Bush and Mubarak spoke to reporters after an Israeli soldier was shot dead as fierce gun battles flared in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the wake of the killing of an Islamic Jihad activist by Israeli forces.
The latest deaths brought the number of people killed since the Palestinian uprising broke out on September 28th to 467 - 382 Palestinians, 71 Israelis, 13 Israeli Arabs and one German.
A senior U.S. administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, all but ruled out any personal mediation by Bush until the violence ends.
The official also said Bush urged Mubarak to send his ambassador to Israel back to his post.
Egypt was the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, but withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv last year in protest at Israel's handling of the Palestinian uprising.
The official confirmed that Bush asked Mubarak to urge Arafat to call for a halt to the violence, and that the Egyptian leader in turn asked Washington to use its influence with Israel "to try to find a way to calm the situation."
Meanwhile, the Palestinians officially called on the United States to resume its role as the leading mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to abandon its policy of "unconditional support" for Sharon.
"We ask the United States to resume its leadership and mediating role in the current conflict," Palestinian information Yasser Abed Rabbo said in a statement.
Bush stuck to his position. "We can't force a peace. We will use our prestige and influence as best we can to facilitate a peace," he said, a view analysts say marks a sharp break with the intensive diplomacy pursued by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.
"We'll work together to bring peace to the Middle East, and we'll work together to try to convince all parties involved to lay down their arms, for there to be less violence," pledged the U.S. president.
Mubarak echoed that view, telling reporters: "We are not going to impose any solution on the parties."
"We are going to facilitate the situation, so they can sit together, negotiate, and we will help them to reach a final conclusion for peace, because all of us need the stability in the area," said the Egyptian leader.
"I think we very much see a larger role for the players directly in the region, in order to try to create the atmosphere and the foundation in which we try to bring about a restoring of calm and rebuilding of confidence and security cooperation," said the senior U.S. administration official.
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