SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Egypt) Feb 9: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hosted a mini-summit on the Iraq crisis in this Red Sea resort on Sunday even as he acknowledged that Arab governments were powerless to stop a US-led war.

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attended the meeting, along with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal and Arab League chief Amr Mussa.

Mr Mubarak first held bilateral talks with his guests and then hosted a lunch and an enlarged meeting attended by all four guests, which ended at 4:45pm (1445 GMT).

President Mubarak was keen to discuss “ways of avoiding war in Iraq and finding a peaceful solution to the crisis”, a presidential aide said.

But the Egyptian leader later acknowledged the limited room for manoeuvre of Arab states.

“We would make ourselves a laughing stock if we thought we could postpone a war,” Mubarak told state television.

“There is the (US) Congress and administration, a (UN) Security Council, a British parliament, they are the ones that can bring forward a war, wage war or postpone it,” he said, when asked if the talks under way could stop a conflict.

Mubarak said US Middle East envoy William Burns was due in Cairo on Feb 16 for talks on the Iraq crisis. His trip will coincide with an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers.

Asked if Burns’s visit would be the last chance to avoid war, the Egyptian president replied: “It rests mainly on an Iraqi behaviour that would help in stopping fighting” from breaking out.

Mubarak said he had sent a written message to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, reinforced by a telephone call two days ago, “urging (him) to show flexibility with the (UN weapons) inspectors so that we can avoid a military strike.”

The Egyptian president said he had not been informed of a French-German plan aimed at averting US-led military action, but confirmed that he would visit Berlin and Paris on Feb 18 and 19.

Sunday’s mini-summit followed talks between Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan in the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba on Saturday during which they called for the UN weapons inspectors to be given more time to certify Iraq’s disarmament peacefully.—AFP