Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called the recent Lebanon war between Israel and Hizbullah a "warning sign" that another regional war could soon break out.
"The Middle East is on the verge of exploding," Mubarak said in an interview marking 33 years since the Yom Kippur War (known to Arab nations as the "October War.)
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In another interview, Syrian President Bashar Assad said Friday that Syria has begun preparations to counter an Israeli attack, and that his country was prepared for an Israeli attack "at any moment." The president told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anba that Israel had given up on the peace process, even though most of the issues of contention between the two countries were resolved.
Assad also said that if Iran attacked any Arab country, Syria would send armed forces in response as required by the Joint Defense Treaty.
Turning to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Assad said that the three Arab countries should "consult less now" and should work together toward helping the hundreds of millions of Arabs in region, and called on Egypt and Saudi Arabia to return to holding summits with Damascus.
"We hope that we go back soon to the idea of holding Syrian-Egyptian-Saudi summits like we used to do in the 1990s," Assad said.
Assad has been making attempts to align Syria with other Middle East heavyweights and play a stronger role in the region's politics.
He also has been trying to mend rifts with Egypt and Saudi Arabia since describing Mideast leaders as "half men" during a televised speech in August.
But Assad later claimed that he did not specifically mean the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, who had criticized Syrian-backed Hizbullah's capture of two IDF soldiers July 12 that sparked the Israeli assault on Lebanon.
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