Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit on Sunday 15/4/2007 underlined the importance that foreign parties should keep hands off Lebanon. Speaking to reporters, Abul-Gheit explained that interference in Lebanon's affairs could lead to the danger of confrontation.

As for the issue of forming an international tribunal probing the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Abul-Gheit highlighted the importance of the Lebanese approval of such a tribunal, saying lack of consensus on this score would jeopardise Lebanon's stability.

Abul-Gheit said he received a phone call on Friday from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who briefed him on his intention to visit Syria for talks on the international tribunal and to send counsellors for legal affairs to Lebanon for talks on the same subject. He hoped these contacts and meetings would lead to a breakthrough in the Lebanese stance, saying the whole situation banks on the Lebanese and their ability to give up some of their narrow interests here and there.

About Egypt's participation in the preparatory meetings of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference in Vienna later in April, Abul-Gheit said Egypt insists that all papers to be presented either at the preparatory meetings or at the NPT conference, due in 2010, would tackle the implementation of the 1995 and 2000 resolutions on the Mideast.
Those two resolutions call for creating a Mideast free of weapons of mass destruction, including the nuclear one, and forcing Israel to join the NPT, he said stressing that Egypt is determined on the implementation of these two resolutions.

On reports that some Western counties are trying to get Israel to join the NPT as a nuclear state like the other five, Abul-Gheit said "this is funny. In order to do so, the NPT must be renegotiated and amended, and the world parliaments must approve the new changes".

He stressed that Egypt will not accept this matter at all. Abul-Gheit made clear that the NPT was indefinitely extended and this means it could not be amended. "Today, there are three countries outside the treaty, including Israel. Those three have either to join the treaty but after abandoning nuclear weapons or remain outside the treaty,"he said.

There are several precedents in this respect, Abul-Gheit said, citing South Africa which abandoned its nuclear military programme and joined the NPT.