CAIRO - Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said a Mediterranean Union meeting was postponed because Arab members all refuse to meet his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Leiberman, an official newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Foreign ministers of the 43-strong grouping, which brings European Union members together with states from north Africa, the Balkans, Arab countries, Israel and Turkey, were due to gather in November in Istanbul.
Egyptian officials want nothing to do with hardline Lieberman since he said last year that President Hosni Mubarak could "go to hell" if he continued to refuse to visit Israel.
The conference was "delayed on the basis of a united Arab stance that refused to meet with the Israeli side and its representative Avigdor Leiberman," Al-Ahram daily quoted Abul Gheit as saying.
The Mediterranean Union was launched at a summit in Paris last year and is aimed at developing projects for regional integration in one of the most volatile regions of the world.
But like its regional predecessor, the Barcelona Process which stalled in large part over Arab-Israeli disputes, the union got bogged down by Israel's bloody war on the Hamas-led Gaza Strip at the turn of the year.
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