PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak, heading a high-level min- isterial delegation, visits Paris tomorrow to hold talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on the stalled Middle East peace-making process, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said yesterday.
The Mubarak-Sarkozy talks, which will be held at the Elysee Palace, will also focus on bolstering economic relations between the two countries, Abul Gheit told the officialMiddle East News Agency (MENA). The talks will also deal with regional and international issues of bilateral concern as well as strengthening ties between Cairo and Paris, he said, adding that the two leaders will also discuss the stalled Middle East peace process and international and Arab efforts to advance it.In Paris, meanwhile, officials said that France will hand back to Egypt five stolen relics on Monday when President Mubarak meets Sarkozy, ending a row over the wall frag- ments sold to the Louvre.President Nicolas Sarkozy will confirm during his talks with President Mubarak the decision to return the 3,000-year-old relics from Luxor's Valley of the Kings, they said."There will be no formal ceremony to mark the restitution,” said an official, but one of the five painted fragments will be pre- sented to President Mubarak during the luncheon.The other four artefacts will be given to the Egyptian Embassy in Paris. The five small relics were chipped off the wall painting of an ancient Egyptian tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty, centuries before Christ, and are currently in storage at the Louvre Museum.Cairo's antiquities department had in October broken off relations with the Louvre in protest and said ties would be restored once the relics were restored.
