Cairo  - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak on Saturday, Egypt's official news agency reported.

Abbas arrived in Cairo from Washington on Friday to brief Mubarak on his recent discussions with US President Barack Obama, Egypt's official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported Saturday.

Speaking to reporters after their meeting, Abbas and Obama stressed the importance of establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and the importance of Israel's halting the expansion of settlements in the West Bank toward that end.

"The (US administration's) stance is satisfactory to us," Abbas told MENA after his meeting with Mubarak on Saturday.

Mubarak had also been scheduled to visit Obama in Washington last week, but cancelled the visit following the death of his grandson.

Mubarak is scheduled to receive Obama in Cairo on Thursday morning, ahead of the US president's planned speech to the Muslim world from the Egyptian capital.

Abbas' visit also came amid Egyptian efforts to reconcile rival Palestinian factions.

Egypt has brokered five rounds of talks between Abbas' faction, Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and roughly a dozen other Palestinian factions.

Earlier this week, the Saudi daily newspaper Okaz cited an unnamed Palestinian source as saying that Egypt would invite Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal to Cairo in July to sign an agreement on a "national unity" government to represent the Palestinians until fresh elections could be held next year.

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, denied that report, saying it was too early to fix a date for the conclusion of such an agreement, and that too many issues remained unresolved. (dpa)