CAIRO, September 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – US Under Secretary of State Karen P. Hughes, tasked with improving a badly bruised US image abroad, was faced with a flurry of angry reasons why Washington was disliked in the Arab and Muslim worlds during her meeting with Egyptian students.

The meeting took place Sunday, September 25, at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where Hughes got a taste of the difficult job ahead when she found herself faced with angry queries over the US war on terror, Iraq, aggressive stance on Syria and Iran, in addition to meddling in the affairs of developing countries.

On Iraq, students accused the United States of illegally invading a sovereign state against the will of the international community, then failing to restore stability and further risking a civil war there.

In her answers, Hughes repeated US claims the world was now safer after ousting the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

US President George W. Bush feared weapons of mass destruction could reach what she termed as terrorists, and therefore Saddam had to be ousted, despite international objections, the US diplomacy envoy said, according to the Middle East News Agency (MENA), Egypt's official News Agency.

The meeting came during Hughes' first visit to the Middle East after assuming her post. She arrived in Egypt Sunday, in the first leg of a tour that will also take her to Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The students – high school graduates that won US scholarships for college studies – also criticized Washington's attempts to isolate Syria and Iran, arguing the region is already boiling with anger at US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention camps were also subject of more criticisms Hughes found herself facing.

Her replies were, for the most part, a repetition of US positions that seemed incapable of changing a growingly deteriorating image in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Hughes told the students Tehran had failed to meet its pledges to the international community, adding that the US was working closely with the EU-3; Britain, France and Germany to secure a safer future for the world as the US feared terrorists could lay their hands on nuclear weapons, according to MENA.

Tantawi, right, welcomed Hughes to Al-Azhar.

Meanwhile, an Egyptian state-owned paper predicted Hughes' attempt to improve Washington's image abroad is bound to fail unless she can promise changes in US policy in the Middle East.

The new editor of Al-Gomhuria daily said Egyptians who meet Hughes should advise the United States to withdraw from Iraq and put pressure on Israel to withdraw from all of the West Bank, after leaving Gaza, according to a Reuters' report.

"We in Egypt or anywhere else do not need a public relations campaign like the one America is conducting," wrote Mohamed Ali Ibrahim.

"Egyptians or Saudis or Turks will not suddenly like America because it has set up a television or radio station ... but feelings may change if America changes its whole approach."

US officials say they do not plan to change policies to please Arabs but they are looking at other ways of changing attitudes -- such as better presentation of policy, emphasizing points of agreement and more direct contacts between peoples, Reuters said.

In Cairo Hughes met the head of al Azhar, one of the Sunni Muslim world's main centers of religious learning and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif Monday.

After her talks with Nazif, Hughes said the United States wanted Palestinians to have a normal peaceful life in a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

"The Gaza disengagement offers an opportunity for this to be a very hopeful time for the road map," she added.

But Al-Gomhuria editor said: "Egyptian officials can also advise Washington ... not to concentrate on the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a great breakthrough for peace, because there are many parts of occupied Palestine which are still waiting for the occupiers to evacuate.

"To reward Israel at this particular time would be a major setback for the peace process."

Hughes said on the plane that this was her first trip to the region and that she as eager to learn as much as she could in her new capacity, in which she oversees the entire State Department public affairs apparatus as well as its cultural and exchange programs.

Her appointment to the job earlier this year followed reports from inside the administration as well as from policy institutes and universities warning that in the last few years American standing in the world, particularly in Islamic countries, has plummeted to new lows.

Hughes said she would steer clear of meeting with representatives of Egypt's largest opposition group, and a lunch scheduled for Monday with "opinion leaders" included mostly people supportive of the government that has ruled the country under emergency decree for a quarter-century, said the Washington Post.