Egypt summit ups pressure on Israel to quit Gaza
A summit of European and Middle Eastern leaders rallied international support for the fragile truce in the Gaza Strip on Sunday and stepped up pressure on Israel to withdraw its troops.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who co-chaired the summit with Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak, said Israel should pull out its forces from the Gaza Strip if Palestinian militants stop firing rockets at the Jewish state.
Alongside five other European leaders in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Sarkozy said: "Israel must indicate clearly that if the rocket firing stops, the Israeli army will leave Gaza."
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown went further, saying Israeli soldiers must withdraw immediately, but also called on Hamas to end the rocket attacks that sparked the three-week war.
The summit, which included neither Hamas nor Israeli representatives, convened as Palestinian armed groups offered a one-week truce in response to the unilateral ceasefire declared by Israel overnight.
"This fragile ceasefire has got to be followed immediately, if it is to be sustainable, by humanitarian access… by troop withdrawals, by an end to arms trafficking," Brown told journalists.
"Today a humanitarian tragedy must be met not just by sympathy but by an immediate mobilisation of aid."
Mubarak announced plans to host a humanitarian aid conference which Sarkozy suggested should be "in a few days."
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who held meetings early Sunday with Mubarak, issued a message of reconciliation.
"We wished from the first day that this aggression did not happen, but when it started our first demand was the end of the aggression.
"And now it has stopped. We wish the end to the aggression remains, and that humanitarian aid begins (reaching) our people immediately."
Egypt, which brokered a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas that expired on December 19 triggering the latest fighting, has been a key mediator between Hamas and Israel, which boycotts the Islamist group as a terrorist organisation.
Abbas has been pressing Hamas, which ousted his forces from Gaza in May 2007, to accept Egypt”s peace plans.
Nabil Amro, Abbas”s ambassador in Egypt, said earlier that the Palestinian Authority insists on the deployment of international troops to Gaza to "protect the Palestinian people."
Hamas has said it will not agree to international forces in Gaza and will treat them as "occupying" soldiers.
Mubarak said Egypt was working hard to secure its borders, but said it would "never allow foreign monitors on its territories."
Egypt held talks with a Hamas delegation in Cairo earlier in the day aimed at consolidating the ceasefire.
"We are working with Hamas, and discussions were held today with them. As soon as Hamas”s position is clarified we will let Israel know and wait for them to come," foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told AFP.
The Islamists” exiled number two Mussa Abu Marzuq later offered a one-week truce to allow Israel to withdraw its troops and open its border crossings with Gaza to basic goods.
After the summit, the six European leaders attending — Sarkozy, Brown, and the leaders of Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic — headed to Israel for dinner talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Ban, who on Saturday condemned as "outrageous" an Israeli strike on a UN-run school in Gaza, held talks in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before travelling to Sharm el-Sheikh.
Picture: Flags of nations fly at the venue of an international summit on the Gaza crisis in Sharm el-Sheikh. A summit of European and Middle Eastern leaders rallied international support for the fragile truce in the Gaza Strip and stepped up pressure on Israel to withdraw its troops. (AFP/Khaled Desouki)