EGYPT AGAINST HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH

Egypt aired its grievances against Iran, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, saying they worked together in the fighting over Gaza to provoke conflict in West Asia. “(They tried) to turn the region to confrontation in the interest of Iran, which is trying to use its cards to escape Western pressure… on the nuclear file,” Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in an interview with Orbit satellite channel broadcast. Aboul Gheit also said that Egypt undermined Qatar’s attempts to arrange a formal Arab summit on Gaza earlier this month, arguing that it would have damaged “joint Arab action”.  “Egypt made the summit fail… This summit, if it had taken place as an Arab summit with a proper quorum, would have damaged joint Arab action. We can see what others do not see,” he said. The interview was broadcast on January 27 evening and January 28 morning and the state news agency MENA carried excerpts. The comments are the first acknowledgement by Egypt that it actively sought to prevent the Doha summit on January 16, which was the subject of a bitter tug-of-war between rival Arab states. It also indicated that a reconciliation meeting in Kuwait last week between Egypt and Saudi Arabia on one hand, and Qatar and Syria on the other had only a short-term effect. Qatar failed to win enough support to hold a formal Arab League summit on Gaza but it went ahead anyway with an informal consultative meeting of Arab leaders.