Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak called for an Arab summit next week in Sharm el-Sheikh, the target of last week terror attack, in a speech Mubarak delivered Thursday.
"I call for an extraordinary Arab summit ... and I suggest that it be held in Sharm el-Sheikh on Wednesday," Mubarak told several hundred supporters in Shibin el Kom, capital of the Nile Delta province of Menoufia, north of Cairo.
The Arab world was witnessing "worrisome developments from the situation on the Palestinian arena to the situation in Iraq to many other challenges," Mubarak said in a nationally televised speech, adding there was "a need to formulate a shared Arab vision."
"The time has come to create decisive role to fight terrorism ... (by introducing) a law that would be a legislative replacement for the emergency law in combating terrorism," said Mubarak.
Mubarak also announced his intention to stand in Sept. 7 elections. "I announce in front of you from here, the province of Menoufia, that I have decided to nominate myself for the presidential elections," said Mubarak.
Late last month, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamic group, has launched an alliance devoted to the peaceful removal of Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981.
Several other opposition groups promptly lent their support to what the Brotherhood has called the an alliance intended "to exercise peaceful pressure on the regime, through legal and constitutional means, to make it respond to democratic change.''
