Pressure intensified on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to agree to direct talks with Israel as Egypt held separate, back-to-back meetings with the two sides Sunday in search of a compromise.
Abbas says he will not negotiate directly with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu unless Israel agrees to recognize its 1967 frontier as a basis for the borders of a future Palestinian state and accepts the deployment of an international force to guard them. Netanyahu has refused to be pinned down on a framework for negotiations.
In an effort to sound out the prospects for a move to direct talks, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met separately with Abbas, Netanyahu and U.S. Mideast envoy George J. Mitchell in Cairo on Sunday.
Egypt has friendly ties with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and Cairo -- like Washington -- is pushing to narrow the divide between the two sides and coax them back to the negotiating table.
None of the leaders spoke after the meetings, and neither did Mitchell, but Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters that there is still work to be done to get the Palestinians to move toward direct talks.
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