Bush pivots to Arab side of Mideast peace dispute

He also sharply criticized Israel for the "humanistic suffering weighed upon the West Bank and Gaza Strip population" of Palestinians. He said Israel's "continued policy of expanding settlements on Palestinian territories" undermines the peace process.

Bush is meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas late Saturday -they have dinner after a more formal discussion session. Israelis and Palestinians have been negotiating since December, but nothing visible has emerged from the secretive process. Bush did no negotiating while in Israel and left the Holy Land with no new progress.

Mubarak, nearly three decades in power, could be an unlikely partner for Bush's push to change that. Bush and Mubarak spent 90 minutes meeting and having lunch.

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.

Egypt, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance behind Israel, would still continue to get $1.3 billion annually in U.S. aid for the next decade under a package the administration sent to Congress last year.

Bush also was seeing Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday. Then, on Sunday, he is meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and several Iraqi leaders.

He had planned to meet with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora as well, 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.

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Associated Press Writer Maggie Michael in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.