PARIS, July 26: Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has expressed his reservations over the so-called “peace process” taking into account the brutal campaign underway by Israel against Palestinians.

Mubarak is touring Paris and is likely to discuss the Middle East peace process with President Chirac.

“Sharon is obviously not very happy with the peace initiatives that have been undertaken in recent weeks, and if he decided to undertake his abominable strike on Gaza, it was certainly with the objective of sabotaging all the efforts towards peace,” Mubarak said.

“I invite the man,” added Mubarak, “to start thinking in a rational manner to preserve his people from a very grave danger.”

President Jacques Chirac has been multiplying his efforts in recent weeks in an attempt to hold a Middle East conference either in Paris later this year or early in 2003, or do so elsewhere — perhaps at Beirut — under French sponsorship.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, for his part, says that “we continue to think that the international conference is the only veritable response” to attacks like that undertaken earlier this week by Israel on Gaza, and that it was “urgent” that the conference be held “before January, in any case prior to the holding of elections in the Palestinian territories.”

As for the question of elections in the Palestinian territories, Mubarak noted that he had told Chirac that “no elections or reforms can ever take place under Israeli gunfire”, and that, moreover, “for an electoral campaign to be able to take place, it’s a prerequisite that the Israeli army pull back its forces from the occupied territories.”