Archaeologists have begun excavating a 4,500-year-old wooden boat found next to the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of Egypt's main tourist attractions, Egypt's top antiquities official said Thursday.

The boat is one of two buried next to the pharaoh Khufu in what appeared to be a religious custom to carry him in the afterlife. Khufu, also known as Cheops, is credited with building the Great Pyramid of Giza.

An Egyptian accused of spying for Israel was sentenced on Thursday to 25 years in jail by a special court.

Cairo's supreme state security court found Tarek Abdel Razek, who was arrested last year, and two Israeli officers guilty of "acts of espionage" on Israel's behalf.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has joined forces with 17 other parties, including liberals and leftists, to form a common platform for parliamentary elections, as it seeks to allay fears among secular groups and the country's Christian minority.

In a meeting on Tuesday, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, the liberal Wafd party, the left-leaning Tagammu and the Noor party, newly formed by Salafist Muslim hardliners, said they would "channel their efforts ... into building a state of law based on citizenship, equality and sovereignty of the people."

A senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the cases of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and a man suspected of spying for the Jewish state, an airport official said.

Yitzhak Molho was to meet Egyptian officials "to discuss the Shalit issue, the recent spy case and other issues such as the peace process and Egyptian gas exports to Israel," the official told Agence France Presse.

Egypt on Sunday appointed Mohammed al-Orabi as the new foreign minister to replace Nabil al-Arabi who will head the Arab League, the official MENA news agency reported.

"Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has tasked Ambassador Mohammed al-Orabi, the deputy foreign minister for economic affairs, to take up the position of minister of foreign affairs," MENA said.

Egypt's premier has said that delaying a parliamentary election scheduled for September would give political parties more time to prepare, state media said Sunday, amid fears an early poll would benefit Islamists.

"Postponing the election would give the chance for a larger number of new political parties to develop," the state-owned Al-Ahram quoted Essam Sharaf as saying.

The Egyptian justice ministry's fraud unit on Thursday slapped a travel ban on ousted president Hosni Mubarak's two daughters-in-law and their children, a judicial official told Agence France Presse.

Assem al-Gohari, who heads the Illicit Gains Authority, ordered the ban on Heidi Rasekh and Khadiga al-Gammal, the wives of Mubarak's sons Alaa and Gamal, and their children, said the official.

A U.S.-Israeli citizen being held in Egypt on espionage charges is not a spy, Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli military radio on Tuesday.

"I can say categorically that this student, who may have behaved bizarrely and irresponsibly, has no ties with Israeli, American or even lunar intelligence services," Lieberman said.

Egyptian authorities have arrested an alleged Israeli officer working for the Mossad intelligence agency on charges of spying, the official MENA news agency reported on Sunday.

The Supreme State Security prosecutor ordered the man's detention for 15 days pending investigations into alleged "spying on Egypt with the aim of damaging its economic and political interests," MENA said.

A Vatican expression of concern over the violence in Syria this week was the latest sign of deep misgivings in Catholic circles about Arab uprisings seen as a threat for Christian minorities.

"The pope has been rather silent on the Arab revolutions," said Marco Politi, a Vatican specialist for Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano.