Mubarak warns against isolating Gaza
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-21 11:10

JERUSALEM - Prime Minster Ariel Sharon is the only Israeli leader who can make peace, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper.

The Egyptian leader cautioned that it would be a "disastrous mistake" for Israel to isolate the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip once it completes its Gaza pullout

"If you erect a fence and carry out a partition, it will be a disastrous mistake. You have to give the residents of Gaza a feeling of freedom so they won't feel like they are in a prison. If you close them up, there will be frustration, which leads to violence," he told the Yediot Ahronot correspondent in Cairo.

Mubarak also said he is considering visiting Israel to attend a memorial for Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister assassinated 10 years ago by a Jewish extremist over the Oslo peace accords that Rabin signed with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"I hope to be able to come, because of my esteem and regard for Rabin," he said.

Mubarak's only previous visit to Israel during his 24-year presidency was to attend Rabin's funeral.

If Rabin had lived, Mubarak said, it would have been easier to conclude a full peace agreement with the Palestinians. "When Rabin went, the problems started. Israelis came in and extended the settlements, and things got complicated. The only one left is Sharon."

The Egyptian leader said Sharon had the necessary grasp of security issues, the power and the decisiveness to make peace, and praised him as a man of his word.

Mubarak spoke as Israel was dismantling Jewish settlements and ending its occupation of the Gaza Strip which it captured from Egypt in the 1967 war.

Mubarak said Israel had to continue negotiations over the West Bank and its final borders, and allow the Palestinians to build a port and revive their international trade.