Senior Egyptian Official: Free elections in Egypt could "threaten" accomodation with Israel

"EGYPT'S decades-long accommodation with Israel could be endangered this year when the country holds free elections, said Hossam Zaki, a senior adviser to the Egyptian Foreign Minister and pivotal intermediary in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr Zaki said Egypt would soon loosen restrictions on Palestinians travelling to Egypt. In his only newspaper interview during a visit to Australia, he also accused Israel of undermining the Egyptian-brokered truce between the Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, which have been fighting a civil war for control over the Palestinian territories.

Mr Zaki, a senior adviser to the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Nabil Elaraby, was in Canberra .... Mr Zaki said that even after the ''earthquake'' of the revolution, one of the enduring pillars of Egyptian foreign policy was its 1979 treaty with Israel, but that presidential and parliamentary elections later this year could threaten that. ''My sense is that if Israel continues to ignore international calls for achieving peace on a just basis, and allowing the Palestinians to establish their state, there will be more and more bitter and negative feelings towards Israel, and the difference now, after January 25 [when the uprising began], is that no government in Egypt will be able to ignore those feelings,'' he said..."