Luxembourg - Egypt wants to play a leading role in the planned Union for the Mediterranean, coordinating the states around the south of the sea, its foreign minister said on Monday at a meeting with European Union officials.

Egypt "accepts and endorses" the idea of the union originally proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and it is "eager to enter high-level discussions with the EU as Egypt, the coordinator of the south," Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Ghreit said.

Egypt will also organize meetings around the southern Mediterranean to forge a common view with Arab neighbours on issues important to the proposed union, he said at a meeting in Luxembourg.

"Whatever we put on the table (on the issue of the proposed union) is very much spoken about, talked about and prepared with Egypt," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana replied.

Sarkozy initially proposed the idea for a Mediterranean Union modelled on the EU in early 2007. However, EU member states without a coastline on the sea rejected the creation of a major new structure, approving instead a strengthened version of current policies.

The talks in Luxembourg were the fourth in an annual series set up under the so-called Association Agreement between the EU and Egypt, which came into force in 2004, and were marked by their "constructive" and friendly tone, participants said.

The two sides discussed Egypt's mediating role in the Middle East Peace Process, agreeing that the immediate prerequisites for progress would be a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and the implementation of a 2005 agreement on crossings into the Gaza Strip.

They also discussed the global problem of world food prices, while Egypt presented EU Foreign-Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero- Waldner with a list of proposals for improving aspects of cooperation, Aboul-Ghreit said.

They also touched on the question of the crackdown on banned opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood ahead of April 8 municipal elections in the country.

"When you have an illegal organization acting, trying to be legal, you arrest its operators," Aboul-Ghreit said.

"There are still a lot of questions that we would have to tackle in the future, but ... the fact that the (April) elections were held was certainly important," Ferrero-Waldner said.

She hoped that future cooperation would allow Egypt to build on the experience of its first-ever contested presidential elections in 2005, she said. (dpa)