CAIRO, Nov 9: US President George W. Bush called Egypt's president on Tuesday to underline his commitment in his second term to work towards a Palestinian state, Egyptian state media said.

Mr Bush outlined a Middle East peace plan supporting the creation of a Palestinian state in June 2002, but only once the Palestinian people dumped their president, Yasser Arafat.

Mr Arafat's fate was mired in confusion on Tuesday as French doctors contradicted reports by senior Palestinian officials that the veteran leader had died at a Paris hospital.

Mr Bush, re-elected for a second term last week, called Mr Arafat an obstacle to peace. Since sidelining him two years ago, Mr Bush's administration has made only sporadic attempts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together.

Egyptian state media said Mr Bush had phoned President Hosni Mubarak, who is a regular mediator in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, to discuss steps he would take to "cooperate more actively" with Middle East peacemaking.

"(Mr) Bush underlined that he would work towards the complete implementation of his vision of a settlement with the establishment of two states, Palestinian and Israeli, living together in peace and security," state media said.

Mr Mubarak said this week he thought Washington would engage more closely in Middle East peacemaking in Mr Bush's second term.

The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and invading Afghanistan and Iraq had distracted the United States from Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking in his first term, he said.-Reuters