Egypt FM: Hamas gave Israel the excuse to launch Gaza attacks

Ahmed Aboul Gheit's comments came as Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, part of a tour by the Turkish leader to work out an Egyptian-Turkish initiative to end the violence. The initiative calls for a halt to Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, a return to a Hamas-Israel truce and an international mechanism to ensure the opening of Gaza border crossings. Erdogan met a day earlier with Syrian President Bashar Assad and was expected to head to Saudi Arabia on Saturday. Aboul Gheit said any eventual truce agreement should include a mechanism to oversee that everything proceeds without one side causes problems with the other. He told journalists that the mechanism could involve international forces or Arab forces or just observers. Israeli officials have said they want international monitors to ensure compliance with any truce. It was not clear whether the mission of monitors proposed by Aboul Gheit would be to ensure the truce or be limited to observing border crossings, one of the central issues in the dispute over Gaza because of Israeli fears of smuggling of weapons. Aboul Gheit said Israel must immediately halt its offensive, but he insisted Hamas must commit to enforcing a halt to rockets. "We expect the Palestinian side to say that if a cease-fire is announced, we'll stop firing rockets," he said, warning that some loose group can decide to continue firing rockets and make it difficult to have a cease-fire. (22,00)