The Prime Minister´s Bureau announced today that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has invited Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas to a three-way summit meeting next week.

The gathering is to take place in Sharm a-Sheikh, in southern Sinai.

The invitation was proffered to Prime Minister Sharon by Mubarak´s envoy Gen. Omar Suleimon, who visited in Jerusalem today. It will be Sharon and Mubarak´s first meeting since Sharon became Prime Minister four years ago, and the first Sharon-Abu Mazen meeting since their summit in Aqaba in the summer of 2003.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is also expected to take part.

Likud MK Yuval Shteinitz, Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, objects to allowing Egypt an active role in the diplomatic process. "I am happy about next week´s meeting," he said just minutes after it was announced, "but hope that it will bring positive results and will truly help in the war against terrorism and the smuggling of arms in Sinai to the terrorists."

"Before the Egyptians come and try to bring regional peace," Shteinitz said, "they should do what they´re supposed to in their own back yard. Their successes, in quotation marks, over the last four years in preventing terrorist-arms smuggling are such that it would perhaps be better if they wouldn´t be involved in training the Palestinian policemen. I trust the Palestinians better in this regard..."

"The truth must be told," Shteinitz said. "Not only Syria and Iran have dispatched weapons for terror; Egypt has allowed tremendous amounts of weapons to pass through to Gaza terrorists, and has turned Sinai into a Paradise for smugglers. Egyptian intervention is bad for us and for the Palestinians - they have caused more harm than good."

MK Shteinitz did not wish to come out against Prime Minister Sharon, and said, "He always pays attention to my positions, including over the last few days, and he has in fact taken some strong stands against Egypt. I´m sure that he plans to demand, as he has in the past, that Egypt put an end to the arms smuggling – not by watching the border, but by smashing and arresting the smuggling rings deep in Sinai from where they set out, just as Jordan did in the past with its smugglers... and he must also demand the cessation of the terrible anti-Semitic incitement in the public media in Egypt. These are the absolutely imperative conditions that will enable us to trust Egypt, and to enable Egypt to be part of the solution and not part of the problem." (IsraelNationalNews © 02/02/05)