Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has postponed scheduled meetings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu's meeting with Mubarak was first pushed off from Tuesday to Wednesday of this week, postponed to Sunday and has now been pushed off indefinitely. Abbas will travel to Egypt on Saturday.
The delay sparked rumors that Mubarak is battling illness. Mubarak, 82, had surgery in March. The Lebanese daily As-Safir reported Tuesday that he is traveling this week to Germany for medical treatment.
Mubarak is planning to meet with Abbas and Netanyahu separately. The meetings are assumed to be connected to a U.S.-backed effort to get Israel and the PA to move from indirect “proximity” talks to direct negotiations.
U.S. envoy George Mitchell is expected to visit the region later this week and meet with Israeli and PA leaders.
Netanyahu supports direct negotiations with no preconditions, but Abbas and other senior PA officials say they will sit down to negotiate only if Israel agrees to freeze construction for Jews in Judea, Samaria and much of Jerusalem and to agree in principle to the establishment of a PA state with borders based on the 1949 armistice line.