After Summit, Mubarak Finds Mideast Peace Prospects Brighter

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat on Thursday that Middle East peace prospects are brightening.

“We met here in a very friendly atmosphere [and] overturned so many obstacles,” he told a brief news conference in this Red Sea resort, without giving details.

“The good relations between the leaders [Arafat and Barak] is giving great hope for the resumption of a solution between both sides, which we consider important,” he said of the Palestinian and Israeli’s agreement this week to relaunch peace talks in Washington later this month.

Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, who attended the summit, said Mubarak told the leaders that he had a feeling that Syrian-Israeli negotiations--frozen since January over the fate of the Golan Heights--would also reopen soon.

In September, Barak and Arafat signed an interim peace deal in Sharm el Sheikh that set an agenda to end more than a century of conflict.

But the efforts have faltered since then. A row over the nature of an Israeli hand-over of West Bank land put the talks on hold in early February.

A Palestinian official said the delayed hand-over of 6.1% of the West Bank would be carried out immediately. Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said Israel gave ground on the Palestinians’ demand to have a say in the details of the withdrawal.