The ministers were gathered for talks in Cairo on the Lebanese crisis and the situation in Gaza where Palestinians were continuing to cross into Egypt after militants bombed out the border barricades last Tuesday night.

Arab League chief Amr Mussa has held several rounds of talks with political leaders in Lebanon to spur them to elect a new president and end the crisis which has left the country without a president since November 24.

On January 5 he proposed a three-point Arab initiative calling for army chief General Michel Sleiman to be elected president, the formation of a national unity government in which no one party has veto power, and the adoption of a new electoral law.

Lebanon’s ruling coalition has accepted the plan but the Hezbollah-led opposition is demanding a third of the seats in a new government so the opposition can have veto power.

In a statement issued after the meeting, the ministers urged all sides in the dispute to vote for Sleiman in a new parliamentary session set for February 11, the 13th attempt to choose a president.

They also called on the Western-backed majority and the Syrian-backed opposition to hold discussions to reach an accord on the formation of a unity government.

The foreign ministers had also been expected to discuss developments in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s main border crossing with Egypt — the only one that bypasses Israel — has been open since militants blew up several sections of the barrier amid a punishing Israeli blockade.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Davos meeting in Switzerland on Thursday, Mussa condemned the Israeli blockade as a "campaign to starve the people there" and said it undermined the already struggling peace process.

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were relaunched in November in the United States, with US President George W. Bush predicting a signed peace deal before his term ends in 2009.

Israel has progressively tightened restrictions on movement in and out of the Gaza Strip since June 2006, when militants from the territory seized an Israeli soldier in a deadly cross-border raid.

The blockade was tightened to a full-scale lockdown last week, although after intense international pressure Israel agreed to allow some fuel shipments into Gaza. -AFP