CAIRO - If Israel moves forward with peace negotiations following the Annapolis summit, Arab states will respond with positive steps, according to Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, in an interview he gave in his Cairo office on the 30th anniversary of Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem.
"Egypt is saying clearly every step on the part of Israel will be met with a step. We will not ask you to first make full peace with the Palestinians before we move toward you," Aboul Gheit said.
The Egyptian foreign minister stressed his country's commitment to the peace accord, but also warned that if Israel continues to blame Egypt for the smuggling from Sinai to the Gaza Strip, and complain about it to Washington, relations will deteriorate.
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Aboul Gheit used the example of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who visited Arab states that had no diplomatic relations with Israel, as ways that progress could be achieved.
"I am sure that if Israel progresses in the peace process, the Arab states will move toward it, each one in its own way. But when an Arab country sees that there is development on the part of Morocco, on the part of Bahrain, it will also move in that direction, no doubt."
Regarding the summit at Annapolis and the participation of Saudi Arabia, Aboul Gheit said that he would comment on that only after the meeting of the Arab League foreign ministers, which began Thursday in Cairo.
He said he did "not know" whether Syria would participate in the summit, but his comments suggested that he believed that Arab states should take part.
"Every country will decide whether it will participate on the basis of the national responsibility it feels and the need to assist the Palestinians."
Commenting on Sadat's historic visit, Aboul Gheit said that the Egyptian president could come to Israel because he was perceived as one who managed to strike at Israel.
"Only after we saw your boots thrown on the sand," he said, referring to the reversal in the 1973 war to the Egyptian military boots strewn in the Sinai desert as soldiers fled the Israeli onslaught during the Six-Day War in June, 1967.
Aboul Gheit rejects Israel's description of relations with Egypt as a "cold Peace."
"I do not use expressions of cold peace and warm peace. Peace is peace. There is no aggression, there is no desire for fighting, there is no going back to war and confrontation," he said pointing to trade and tourism relations.
The foreign minister was angered when he was asked why Egypt did not officially commemorate Sadat's visit.
He said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not over yet. "Why commemorate the peace? Do the Americans and the Japanese commemorate the peace between them? If you want to celebrate 30 years of Israeli-Egyptian peace, that is your affair. We commemorate it in our style and our way."
Warning Israel not to blame Egypt for smuggling from Sinai into the Strip, and complaining to the U.S. (which has frozen some of its military aid to Cairo), Aboul Gheit said Israel "tried to stir up trouble between Egypt and the U.S. - but you failed."
Commenting on the Egyptian request to double the number of border guards along the border with the Strip, a proposal Israel rejected, Aboul Gheit called on Jerusalem to reconsider.
"You have nothing to worry about," he said referring to Israeli concerns that Cairo is trying to undermine the peace agreements. "Four thousand Egyptian soldiers are not a threat to an army of 400,000. Try us. Or perhaps you want the problem to go on?
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