PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak this week received Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri for talks that were followed up by a detailed session held by Al-Hariri with Mubarak's top aides and another with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. Al-Hariri and the officials he met with declined comment, however, sources close to the talks confirmed that the prime minister was coming to Cairo with bad news. "The situation [in Lebanon] is very tense and [Al-Hariri] is very worried," said one Egyptian source who asked that his name be withheld. According to the same source the Lebanese prime minister, while in Cairo, told his interlocutors that he would not exclude confrontation between government sympathisers and those of the opposition over the handling of the tribunal on the killing of former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri. "I am not saying he is expecting those confrontations to happen but he fears they might happen," the source added. Al-Hariri, according to one Lebanese source, is hoping that Egypt would lend him its direct political support. On another front Mubarak on Tuesday received senior Iraqi Shia figure Ammar Al-Hakim who visited Cairo for talks with the president and Moussa as part of a regional tour designed to solicit support for the composition of a national unity government that would deny Nuri Al-Maliki, the acting prime minister, the opportunity to single-handedly compose a government. According to statements made by Al-Hakim following his talks with Mubarak, he urged Egypt to throw its weight behind the composition of a national unity government. Al-Hakim stressed that it was only through a coalition that brings together the leading political groupings that Iraq could side-step instability and opt for political tranquillity and economic prosperity. Al-Hakim's visit came in the wake of a visit by Iyad Allawi, Al-Maliki's chief political rival and in parallel with a diplomatic move by Al-Maliki himself with other regional powers. On a parallel front Mubarak on Wednesday received Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal for a review of the situation in Lebanon and Iraq. According to brief statements made separately by Al-Faisal and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit Egyptian-Saudi consultations on Lebanon and Iraq, as well as the confused developments in the Palestinian- Israeli negotiations and the tense situation in Sudan will continue in the coming weeks. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to the top diplomats of Cairo and Riyadh, will continue to work in support of civil stability in Lebanon, a representative government in Iraq, a peaceful referendum in Sudan and the continuation of Palestinian-Iraeli negotiatons, far from Israeli designs.
