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CAIRO : UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon held talks Saturday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak amid a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at reviving peace efforts in the troubled Middle East.
"It is necessary for the international community to encourage this ongoing peace process," Ban told a news conference after the talks, on the second leg of his first tour of the Middle East since taking office in January.
His visit comes after the formation of a new Palestinian unity government embracing president Mahmud Abbas' Fatah faction and the Islamist Hamas movement, sparking a spate of Western contacts with Palestinian ministers for the first time in a year.
The UN chief urged the newly formed government to meet demands set by the international community.
"We expect the national unity government would meet the expectation of the international community for the peace and security of the region," Ban said.
The Quartet of major players in the Middle East peace process -- the European Union, Russia, United Nations and United States -- said on Wednesday it would maintain the crippling aid freeze imposed when Hamas first formed a government last March.
The UN chief will leave Egypt later Saturday for Israel and the Palestinian territories where he is to meet with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before heading to Jordan.
"My itinerary schedule does not include meeting with prime minister Haniya," Ban told reporters.
He said, however, that he may hold talks with two leading independent members of the new government, foreign minister Ziad Abu Amr and finance minister Salam Fayyad.
On Friday, Ban met Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit in Cairo and was also due to hold talks with Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa on Saturday.
He sees "a renewed dynamism in diplomacy in the Arab world" and wants to "express his support to ongoing efforts to re-energise the Middle East peace process", UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said before the trip.
His visit comes ahead of next week's Arab League summit in Riyadh where he is to address the opening session.
It also coincides with the arrival of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the southern Egyptian city of Aswan for talks with foreign ministers of regional allies Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- the so-called Arab Quartet.
In Aswan, Rice will try to persuade her Arab counterparts to amend a five-year-old peace plan drafted by Saudi Arabia which advocates full normalisation of relations in return for a full withdrawal from occupied Arab land.
Israel has expressed renewed interest in the Arab initiative but also voiced reservations over certain points.
Rice's efforts to convince Arabs to amend the plan to take Israeli misgivings into consideration is likely to be a hard sell after the Egyptian foreign minister made clear the plan was a comprehensive blueprint that could not be cherrypicked.
Ban's first Middle East your since taking office three months ago got off to a shaky start Thursday when a mortar shell rattled a press conference he was giving with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The explosion caused the UN chief to flinch but he insisted Saturday that the expansion of the world body's presence in Iraq was still being considered.
"We are now considering ... what the UN can do, including the increase of presence of the UN in Iraq and also further assisting the political, economic and social reconstruction," he said.
- AFP /ls
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