US Secretary of State Colin Powell is due in Cairo next week to reactivate the moribund Mideast peace process, leading Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram reported on Saturday.

"President Hosni Mubarak will hold talks with Powell on Egypt's efforts to advance the peace process," al-Ahram said, quoting Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Nabil Fahmi.

"Powell is expected to discuss with the Egyptian leadership ways to reactivate the roadmap peace plan and how to promote bilateral ties," Fahmi was quoted as saying.

The roadmap, worked out by the international quartet, comprising the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union, envisions a full Palestinian state by 2005. "The issues of Iraq and Sudan will also figure high on the agenda of Powell's talks in Cairo," said the ambassador.

Egypt, a heavyweight in the Arab world and a key peace broker between the Palestinians and Israel, has been working to find a way out of the current stalemate of the peace process.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath is due in the Egyptian capital later in the day for talks with his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul Gheit.

"The Abul Gheit-Shaath meeting is expected to tackle the latest developments in the Palestinian territories and Egypt's efforts to contain the current political crisis, as well as how to put into effect the roadmap," Egypt's official MENA news agency reported Friday.

On Wednesday, Egypt called for empowering Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei over security services as a means to deal with unprecedented chaos in the Gaza Strip.

"We have called for unifying the Palestinian security organs and for the prime minister to be given authority over those organs that is parallel to that of the chairman (Yasser Arafat) of the Palestinian National Authority," presidential spokesman Maged Abdel-Fattah told reporters.

Qurei has been fighting for greater control of security services since he assumed office last autumn.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and four other isolated enclaves in the northern West Bank by the end of next year and withdraw troops.

Fearing that post-pullback vacuum could lead to chaos in the Gaza Strip, Egypt has offered to send 150 to 200 officers and security experts on a six-month mission to help train a 30,000-strong Palestinian security force.

It has also voiced its willingness to increase the number of its troops on the border with the Palestinian territory.

Egypt has claimed that it would not send experts to the Gaza Strip in light of Israel's continuous military actions against the Palestinians.