![](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2007\/05\/cheney.jpg\" "\\"cheney\\"")
AQABA, Jordan (AFP) – US Vice President Dick Cheney makes a lightning visit to Egypt on Sunday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak expected to focus on helping Iraq and curbing Iran’s rising influence. <\/p>\nAQABA, Jordan (AFP) – US Vice President Dick Cheney makes a lightning visit to Egypt on Sunday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak expected to focus on helping Iraq and curbing Iran’s rising influence. <\/p>\n
Cheney, who spent the night at this Jordanian resort after a quick stop in Saudi Arabia, was to travel to Cairo for the meetings, which include a one-on-one with Mubarak and talks with Egypt’s defence minister, aides said. <\/p>\n
The US vice president is in the tail-end of a week-long visit to the Middle East that included a surprise two-day trip to Iraq, a visit to the United Arab Emirates and a stop in the Saudi town of Tabuk. <\/p>\n
His spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said the meeting with Saudi leaders on Saturday, where he sought their help in Iraq, "served to reaffirm and strengthen old friendships."
The talks came two months after Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, a close ally, denounced the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq. <\/p>\n
In Saudi Arabia, Cheney was greeted on arrival by Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz before going by motorcade to meet the king along a route lined by hundreds of waving soldiers and civilians. <\/p>\n
Despite the traditional US-Saudi alliance, the king opened an annual Arab summit in March with a speech denouncing the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq and warning that "ugly sectarianism threatens civil war." <\/p>\n
The vice president’s week-long Middle East visit is aimed at encouraging Washington’s allies to help pull Iraq’s minority Sunni Muslims into the country’s fragile political process.
He is also hoping to win help in curbing the influence of a rising Iran, amid talk that the Islamic republic and Saudi Arabia are in the early skirmishes of a proxy war in Iraq.
Some US officials and analysts worry that sectarian violence there may be fed by support for Iraq’s Sunnis from predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and backing for the Shiite majority from mainly Shiite Iran. <\/p>\n
"I don’t think it’s a proxy war at this stage. That’s not the way I perceive it," Cheney told Fox News in an interview on Thursday. "I don’t think that’s the case yet." <\/p>\n
Cheney’s talks in Abu Dhabi came on the eve of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s arrival in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Sunday, in the first visit since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution by an Iranian head of state to the close US Gulf ally. <\/p>\n
An aide said Cheney and UAE leaders had discussed Ahmadinejad’s visit on Saturday, and suggested that Washington bore its Gulf ally no ill will for hosting him. <\/p>\n
"They have a very large neighbour less than a hundred miles away," the official said on condition he not be named. "President Ahmadinejad was very interested in visiting. The UAE is a very hospitable neighbour." <\/p>\n
The US vice president also hoped to use his influence in Saudi Arabia — forged during the 1991 Gulf War and his oil industry dealings — to smooth over relations badly strained by sectarian violence in Iraq. <\/p>\n
King Abdullah refused to meet Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at the Riyadh summit, and an Arab diplomat said it was because the monarch believed Maliki had deepened the sectarian divide in his country. <\/p>\n
The White House sees Saudi Arabia as a cornerstone ally in its campaign to isolate Iran and curtail Tehran’s nuclear programme, which Washington says is a cover for efforts to build an atomic arsenal. Iran denies the charge. <\/p>\n
Cheney is also set to hold talks in Jordan with Jordanian King Abdullah II before heading back to Washington. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AQABA, Jordan (AFP) – US Vice President Dick Cheney makes a lightning visit to Egypt on Sunday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak expected to focus on helping Iraq and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[175],"class_list":{"0":"post-3436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-terrorism-a-fundamentalism","8":"tag-updated"},"yoast_head":"\n