CAIRO: Egypt is to host an international emergency anti-piracy conference bringing together an unprecedented number of officials and experts in Cairo in May, the organizers said on Thursday. An emergency summit has been organized… with the government of Egypt, Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen, Jordan, Panama, Malaysia, international agencies and industry leaders, Phoenix Intelligence Support Services said …

JERUSALEM: Benjamin Netanyahu will make his first trip to Egypt as Israeli prime minister during the first half of May for talks with President Hosni Mubarak, according to an Israeli government statement late Thursday. In the month since Netanyahu took office, there have been signs of strain between Israel and Egypt, mostly over the appointment …

CAIRO: Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah ended a fourth round of power-sharing talks without a deal Tuesday, but are to meet again on May 16, negotiators said. The key stumbling block remains the political program of a Palestinian unity government that would be in power until elections are held in January 2010. Prospects of …

CAIRO: President Hosni Mubarak sounded a warning to workers over “unlawful strikes in a speech Wednesday to commemorate Labor Day, stating that it could hurt the economy during the current global crisis. While admitting that the government had also to do its part, Mubarak said that Egyptian workers had a responsibility to buckle down during …

CAIRO: With press reports claiming that new Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has somewhat changed his hard-line stance, it remains to be seen whether that will mean Egypt will be willing to host him. Analysts believe that an apology – not just general positive statements about Egypt’s role in the region – is unavoidable if …

CAIRO: Independent and Muslim Brotherhood members in the People’s Assembly filed an investigation request into what they claim is the government’s overspending on officials’ luxury cars and offices. The request was filed to the prime minister and the minister of finance and was presented to the PA’s chairman Ahmed Fathi Sorour, according to Hamdy Hassan, …

BOGOTA: Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that the United States and Syria are close to restoring full diplomatic ties, but he doubted Cuba s new openness means its leaders are ready to grant free speech or change their political system. I don t have much doubt that the present tentative plan of our government …

CAIRO: Yousef Abu Zuhri, brother of Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, was arrested in Al-Arish Monday night on suspicion of entering Egypt illegally through an underground tunnel. Abu Zuhri was arrested in a rented apartment on Mustapha Kamel Street in Al-Arish, which is 40 km from Egypt’s border with Gaza. The owner of the flat …

LUXEMBOURG: The European Union has decided to deepen its relations with Egypt, the Czech EU presidency announced Monday. The EU supports Egyptian efforts to work on closer ties with the EU, and has therefore decided to set up a group to consider ways for strengthening bilateral relations, said Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Kohout, whose …

STOCKHOLM: The volume of weapons exported to the Middle East has risen sharply in the last four years, threatening to destabilize the volatile region further, a leading Swedish think tank warned Monday. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said arms exports to the Middle East increased 38 percent in the period 2004 to 2008, compared …

CAIRO: Rival delegations from Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas s Fatah party and the Islamist Hamas movement were in Cairo on Sunday for a new round of reconciliation talks already deemed difficult. The two delegations were expected to meet separately with Egyptian security officials ahead of three-way talks on Monday with intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the …

CAIRO: The People’s Assembly has refuted reports that 70 of its member were voted in fraudulently and thus their parliamentary status must be automatically annulled. On Sunday, independent MP Alaa Abdel Moneim said during the PA’s morning session that he has a list of 70 names whose membership in parliament has been annulled by an …

CAIRO: Bedouins in Sinai attempted in vain to protest Saturday against increased security raids in the wake of the Hezbollah cell case. Security forces managed to scupper the protest but the assembled Bedouins who gathered near Al-Oja in an area called Abu Hashad decided that another protest would be held on June 1. The protest …

CAIRO: The Muslim Brotherhood distanced itself from the case of the Hezbollah terror cell after former members of the group were implicated in the activities of the alleged cell. A statement by the group Saturday indicated that Egyptian national security was a “red line that cannot be tampered with. The group expressed its refusal of …

CAIRO: The Muslim Brotherhood says it supports the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which the Egyptian government has accused of planning attacks in Egypt. Hezbollah has rejected the accusation, but admitted one of its members was in Egypt supervising weapons shipments to the Palestinian group Hamas that controls the neighboring Gaza Strip. The Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition …

CAIRO: The lawyer for some of the detainees held on suspicion of belonging to a Hezbollah cell denied Thursday newspaper reports claiming that no evidence of torture was found on the detainees. Newspapers had reported that the State Security Prosecutor Hisham Badawy referred the detainees to the forensic medicine department to ascertain if they had …

CAIRO: The Somali President has promised President Hosni Mubarak to work on the release of the two Egyptian fishing boats captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia earlier this month, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said. Mubarak had asked his Somali counterpart Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to intervene, the official news agency MENA reported. Ahmed …

CAIRO: Egypt has extended an invitation to new Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to visit Egypt, an invite which was relayed by Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman during his visit to Israel. Some reports indicate that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has also been invited to Egypt, but President Hosni Mubarak confirmed that the invitation was …

MILAN: A judge will decide next month whether to continue with the politically sensitive trial of 26 Americans and seven Italians accused in the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect after the high court threw out key evidence deemed classified. Defense lawyers for the Americans – mostly CIA agents – and Italians argued Wednesday …

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama will invite the Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian leaders to the White House in the coming weeks for separate talks on moving forward with the Middle East peace process, the White House said Tuesday. Spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president was issuing the invitations in hopes of building on talks he held …

JERUSALEM: Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman arrived in Israel on Wednesday for his first round of talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top officials in his government. Suleiman, on the first visit by a high-level Egyptian official to Israel since the hawkish Netanyahu took office on April 1, was meeting Defense Minister Ehud Barak …

CAIRO: Over fears of being accused of interfering in domestic affairs, European Commission ambassador Klaus Ebermann was loath to criticize Egypt for its sluggishness in the area of political reform Wednesday. The European Commission will publish a progress report on Egypt today as part of its set of reports on each of its Neighborhood Policy …

ADDIS ABABA: Sudanese President Omar Al-Beshir arrived Tuesday in Ethiopia, on his sixth foreign trip since an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes was issued against him. Foreign ministry spokesman Wahide Belay says Al-Beshir will discuss routine issues with neighboring Ethiopia and will leave Wednesday, implying that he will not face arrest despite an …

CAIRO: Egypt will submit a motion to the Lebanese government in which it accuses certain Lebanese official bodies of conspiring with the Hezbollah cell that was allegedly operating in Egypt. According to local and regional reports, Egypt has discovered through its investigation of suspects charged with operating a Hezbollah cell on it soil that a …

CAIRO: Egypt’s foreign ministry summoned an Iranian official on Tuesday after Iran criticized Egypt’s claim that it had arrested members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah for allegedly planning attacks in the country. Foreign ministry official Mohamed El-Zarqani summoned Mohamed Rajabi, the head of Iran’s special interests office in Egypt, to express key US ally Cairo’s “absolute rejection …

EL-ARISH: A delegation of Hamas officials from Gaza arrived in Egypt through the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, a border official said, a week before Palestinian unity talks were to resume in Cairo. The delegation was led by Salah Bardawil, one of the Islamist movement s leaders in the Gaza Strip. Hamas and its secular …

CAIRO: President Barack Obama s Mideast envoy said Saturday in Cairo that a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the only way to end the Mideast conflict, adding that Egypt was necessary to achieve this goal. George Mitchell s trip to Egypt came after three days of separate meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Israel. …

AL-ARISH: Egyptian security forces have discovered five tunnels used to smuggle contraband to the besieged Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, a security official said on Saturday. The tunnels were found north of the Egyptian border town of Rafah over the past few days and would be destroyed, he said. There were motorbikes, food and computer parts found …

CAIRO: Al-Qaeda s No. 2 leader has ridiculed President Barack Obama s plan to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan in a new internet audio recording released Monday. Ayman Al-Zawahri also criticized Pakistan s US-allied government for its attempts to make deals with Muslim fundamentalists along its border with Afghanistan in hopes of draining support for …