he Mideast peace dispute, and he may well get a less glowing reception than he did over two days in Israel earlier this week. Bush ends talks with Saudi King Abdullah over breakfast Saturday before flying to Egypt to meet with a string of leaders key to U.S. goals in the region: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. There are more on Sunday: Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and several Iraqi leaders.
Bush was planning to also see Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora while in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik for just over a day. But that session fell off his schedule amid turmoil in Lebanon.
The militant group Hezbollah overran Beirut neighborhoods last week in protest of measures aimed at the group by Saniora's government. The display of military power by the Shiite militant group resulted in the worst internal fighting since the end of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.
But on Thursday, Saniora's government reached a deal with Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization, after Lebanon's Cabinet reversed measures aimed at reining in the militants.
Bush was seeing Mubarak in a formal meeting session as well as over lunch at a luxury hotel overlooking the sea. But the Egyptian leader, nearly three decades in power, could be an unlikely partner for Bush's push to spread freedom in the Middle East.
Egypt was the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel and has long been seen as a key mediator in the Mideast dispute that Bush has said he wants to solve by the time he leaves office next January.
But U.S. has seen its longtime alliance with Egypt sour over the pace of political reform there.
Over the past year, several secular newspaper editors in Egypt have been tried, some sentenced to prison, for anti-Mubarak writings. The country's most outspoken government critic, Egyptian-American Saad Eddin Ibrahim, has gone to the United States for fear of arrest; he faces trial on accusations of harming national interests. The Egyptian government also has waged a heavy crackdown on its strongest domestic opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, arresting hundreds of the Islamic fundamentalist group's members.
