Mubarak: Israel not planning war

Egypt's president reassures Hariri; Gheit denies "enemy state" remark.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Mubarak looks green 311 (photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Mubarak looks green 311
(photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Amid fears of renewed armed conflict in the North, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reassured his Lebanese counterpart Sa'ad Hariri on Tuesday that Israel had no plans to attack his country.
On his way out of a meeting with Mubarak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm e-Sheikh, Hariri said the Egyptian president had cited "positive" signs from his recent contacts with Israel.
However, the Lebanese president said he was assured Egypt would support Lebanon should such a war break out.
Hariri denied recent accusations that Syria had transferred Scud missiles to Hizbullah in Lebanon, saying his country was "not prepared to sit in the dock."
Reports of the alleged Scud transfer surfaced in Kuwait’s Al-Rai newspaper earlier this month. Israel subsequently issued a stern warning that it would consider attacking both Syrian and Lebanese targets in response to a Scud attack on its territory.
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Earlier Tuesday, Israel Radio reported that Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had passed on messages to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and representatives of the other permanent UN Security Council members, warning that the current Israel-Lebanon tensions could deteriorate into a war in the summer.
Meanwhile, according to the radio station, Egypt denied Arab media reports that Aboul Gheit had called Israel an enemy state at a press conference in Beirut on Monday.
Israeli Ambassador to Egypt Yitzhak Levanon had protested the alleged remark on Monday to the director of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry's Israel desk.
In response, the ministry said that all Aboul Gheit had said was that he could not transmit messages from Israel to Lebanon since Lebanon viewed Israel as an enemy state.