SHARM EL-SHEIKH: President Hosni Mubarak said yesterday that Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s firebrand foreign minister, is still not welcome in Egypt, according to remarks reported by the official MENA news agency. Reporting an interview Mubarak gave in Arabic to Israeli television, the agency said that when asked whether Lieberman would visit Egypt after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said: “No.”

Mubarak and Netanyahu met on Monday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm Al Sheikh to take stock of the Middle East peace process. “I deal with Netanyahu, I don’t deal with Lieberman,” Mubarak reportedly told the interviewer. “I don’t know if the foreign minister (Ahmed Abul Gheit) invited him or not. But public opinion will not accept Lieberman, that’s the problem,” MENA quoted Mubarak as saying.

“Public opinion will not accept him because he said ‘I’m going to attack the Sinai’ and he has attacked us. These words remain engraved in the public conscience. How could he say ‘I’m going to destroy the dam’?” at Aswan, he asked.Lieberman, an ultra-nationalist who has triggered controversy over his virulently anti-Arab stance, leads the far-right Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is Our Home) party, and has been called a “racist” by critics.

He has suggested bombing Egypt’s famed Aswan dam in the event of war between the two countries, which signed a landmark peace deal in 1979. Lieberman also said last year, before he became foreign minister after the February 2009 general election, that Mubarak could “go to hell” if he continued to refuse to visit the Jewish state. Twice in recent weeks Cairo has denied reports from Israel that Lieberman had been formally invited to Egypt. Abul Gheit also said earlier this month that he would not shake Lieberman’s hand.

Mubarak yesterday urged rival Palestinian factions to unite in order to achieve the creation of a Palestinian state. “If they want two states, Palestinians must unite,” Mubarak said during a joint news conference with visiting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

“Being two separate states (in Gaza and the West Bank) will not work and will just make Israel very happy,” said an apparently frustrated Mubarak. The veteran Egyptian leader also urged Israel to allow movement between the two territories. “Israel must agree to movement between the West Bank and Gaza so these people can mix with each other,” he said.

Cairo has played a key role as mediator between Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction and the rival Islamist Hamas movement, which have been bitterly divided after Hamas seized Gaza in a week of deadly factional fighting in June 2007. Egyptian efforts to reconcile them have been unsuccessful so far because of disagreements on the composition and obligations of a Palestinian unity government. Berlusconi reiterated his support for a two-state solution, a bedrock principle of international peace efforts under the 2003 “roadmap” plan.