Egypt to send intelligence chief to Israel soon

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt will send intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to Israel soon for talks on a truce deal Cairo hopes to seal between Israel and Palestinian militants, President Hosni Mubarak said on Sunday.

"I think the head of intelligence will travel there, but after the holiday celebrations in Israel. He will go to talk to the Israeli side," Mubarak told reporters in remarks aired live on state television.

Mubarak did not give a specific date for the trip, but Israel marks Memorial Day on Wednesday and its 60th anniversary on Thursday.

Egypt has been trying to broker a truce between Palestinian militants and the Jewish state, and state news agency MENA said that securing a deal was one of Mubarak's "urgent priorities".

MENA reported last week that Palestinian groups meeting in Cairo had agreed to a truce starting in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. But a number of Palestinian factions were equivocal in their support, and some said they reserved the right to retaliate against Israeli attacks.

A senior Israeli official said on Thursday that Israel would likely agree to an informal truce in Gaza if cross-border rocket attacks and arms smuggling into the territory ended.

The plan also includes attempts to reconcile the two biggest Palestinian groups -- Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, which controls the Palestinian Authority from its base in the West Bank.

MENA has said the truce proposal is part of a broader plan that would eventually lead to the lifting of the blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza since last June.

The agency quoted what it described as a well placed source on Sunday as saying that Cairo hoped Israel would not reject Egypt's truce proposal but "if that happens, we reiterate President Mubarak's words that we will not leave Gaza to go hungry".