Osama al-Baz met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas for three hours and discussed means of salvaging the moribund peace process, said Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath, who also attended the meeting.
"The Palestinian leadership welcomes this visit, as Egypt always stood by the Palestinians and is now looking for a way out of the crisis," Shaath told reporters after the meeting in Arafat's battered West Bank headquarters.
"There is a push for a new truce, a real truce, that both sides will have to respect," he said.
The truce, which Abbas brokered and Palestinian militant groups proclaimed on June 29, collapsed after a bomber from Hamas blew himself up and killed 20 passengers on a Jerusalem bus Tuesday and Israel responded by assassinating a senior official of the Islamist group on Thursday.
Baz, who Israeli public radio said was also due to meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, told reporters after his meeting that he had handed a message from Mubarak to Arafat.
"Every side must implement its commitments to the roadmap to save the peace process. If not, the consequences will cause a lot of suffering on both sides," he warned.
While intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has visited the Palestinian territories frequently in recent months, Mubarak rarely dispatches his top aide. – Sapa-AFP.
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