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Mubarak shows he is indispensable to making peace in the Middle East: Analysts |
Egypt takes what it sees as its rightful place in the Middle East this week when it hosts the first Israeli-Palestinian summit in four years. Its motives? Stability, a good image and foreign investment, analysts say.
Egypt has prepared for months for an event like the Middle East meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday, with a charm campaign towards Israel and carefully balanced mediation between competing Palestinian factions.
Egyptian intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, set the summit up last week on one of his increasingly frequent visits to Israel. He has acted as informal mediator between the Israelis and the Palestinian militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
But apart from the strong desire to see an end to conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, President Hosni Mubarak has subsidiary motives for showing he is indispensable to the mechanics of making peace in the Middle East, analysts say.
Internationally he faces closer than usual scrutiny of the authoritarian Egyptian political system, which has barely changed since Mubarak took office 23 years ago.
The Bush administration’s campaign for democracy in the Middle East makes it important for Egypt to prove what a valuable partner it is in the region, analysts say.
“Mubarak is trying to appear as someone doing his utmost to help Israel and the United States in the Middle East, not to be in confrontation with U.S. foreign policy,” said Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University.
For a quarter of a century Washington has been tolerant towards Egyptian governments on repression and human rights abuses in exchange for Egypt’s 1979 treaty with Israel and what it sees as Egypt’s constructive influence over the Palestinians.
That comfortable arrangement is now in dispute. “The helpful role of Egypt’s president ... should not earn him immunity from criticism of his self-perpetuating dictatorship,” The New York Times said in an editorial last week.
Domestically the new cabinet’s priority is to encourage foreign investment, even if that means economic cooperation with Israelis through the Qualified Investment Zones (QIZ) agreement signed with Israel and the United States in December.
Charm Offensive
| Washington has been tolerant towards Egypt on human rights abuses in exchange for Egypt’s 1979 treaty with Israel. |
Though popular with the textile workers who might benefit, the agreement makes the government vulnerable to the argument that it is giving Israel backdoor access to Arab economies.
The charm offensive towards Israel began in the weeks before the signing of the agreement, which allows companies in Egypt to export to the United States without restrictions, provided their products contain at least 11.7 percent Israeli inputs.
The highlight was the release of convicted Israeli spy Azzam Azzam, a textile industry technician whose continued detention might have deterred Israelis interested in investing.
“There seems to be a new deal, with a campaign in Egypt to improve the image of Sharon and to show Israel as a peace-loving nation,” added Emad Gad, a senior researcher at al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a Cairo think-tank.
He noted that the Egyptian state press already has stopped attacks on Sharon and cartoons portraying him as a bully.
Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif implicitly linked the QIZ agreement and the Sharm el-Sheikh summit on Sunday. In the context of the QIZ, he said: “Taking care of Egypt’s interests goes hand in hand with moves in the Palestinians’ interests.”
On the ground, diplomats say, Egypt has earned a voice in Israeli-Palestinian talks because of the role it is already playing in preparing for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Some 40 Palestinian police officers went to Egypt last week for training at Egyptian institutions and Egypt has offered to reinforce its security presence on the border between Gaza and Egypt to prevent arms smuggling, a chronic Israeli complaint.
Under a draft agreement which could be signed later this week, Egypt would substitute 750 border guards for the lightly armed police who now patrol the border, officials said.
Speculation has raged for several days about whether Mubarak will agree at Sharm el-Sheikh to another goodwill gesture -- sending an Egyptian ambassador back to Tel Aviv.
Mohamed Bassiouny, the former Egyptian ambassador withdrawn in 2000 in protest, said that if peace talks resumed and the Israelis stopped some of their practices in the Palestinian territories, there would be no obstacle to sending an envoy.
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