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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 June 1999 Issue No. 433 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 June 1999 Issue No. 433
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Books Living Travel Sports Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Mubarak trips
PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak will be travelling to Morocco on Saturday after recovering from the flu. The trip, which should include a brief stopover in Algeria, was put off hours before the president's departure on Tuesday. A presidential spokesman told the press that Mubarak's two-day visit to Morocco was postponed because the president "has come down with a sudden case of the flu".Mubarak is also scheduled to travel to the US at the end of this month and meet President Bill Clinton on 1 July. The president will also take the opportunity to meet other top US officials including congressmen and diplomats and will co-chair the US-Egyptian Presidential Council with US Vice-President Al Gore. Topping Mubarak's agenda during the working visit to Washington will be the Middle East peace process and bilateral relations.
In Morocco Mubarak will head the joint Egyptian-Moroccan committee with King Hassan, which meets biannually to discuss mainly bilateral economic cooperation. Nine agreements and protocols are expected to be signed during the trip, including accords on energy, transport, health, education, technology, agriculture and administrative development.
The committee will also discuss a report prepared by the joint business council detailing suggestions to facilitate joint Egyptian-Moroccan investment projects and raise annual trade between the two countries from the current $32 million to $200 million.
Warming up
SUDANESE Foreign Minister Mustafa Othman Ismail was scheduled to arrive in Cairo last night for his second visit in less than three weeks, amid indications of reciprocal warmth in bilateral relations. Ismail and Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa were planning lengthy talks to review the positive bilateral developments as well as Egyptian efforts to forge a national reconciliation between the Khartoum government and opposition. Also on the agenda of their talks were the possibility of a summit between President Hosni Mubarak and Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir and the filling of the vacant post of Egyptian ambassador in Khartoum. Ismail had last visited Cairo on 23 May.
Slow count
WESTERN poll-watchers expressed deep concern yesterday over the slow counting of the votes in the first democratic elections in Indonesia since 1955, warning it could raise serious doubts and damage credibility. EU election observers and former US President Jimmy Carter, head of the Carter Institute, said the period of transfer from the written form of results to the computerised one was the most vulnerable to fraudulent misuse, distortion and false counting.
By midday yesterday, two days after the closing of polls, only three per cent of the ballot votes had been counted, Reuters reported. The results announced by the independent election commission showed the two main reform parties, Megawati Sukarnoputri's secular Indonesian Democracy Party-Struggle and the National Awakening Party, were ahead, holding more than 60 per cent of the vote, putting the ruling party Golkar into the political shadows with 25 per cent.
