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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 July 1999 Issue No. 438
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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 Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Cairo's vote of confidence
By Dina EzzatThere is one thing that an Egyptian in Algiers was bound to hear this week: that this is the third time in a month that President Hosni Mubarak has visited the country. If the speaker is an Algerian diplomat, and his or her interlocutor an Egyptian journalist, this observation is invariably followed by a rather more personal interpretation: that these visits by President Mubarak are a clear, and much appreciated, vote of confidence in Algeria as it tries to emerge from the darkness of the last seven inexorable years.
And as if in proof, Algerian officials never tire of pointing to the manifest good feeling that exists between President Mubarak and their own President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika.
Thus, while the most obvious reason for this third visit is the summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) which Algiers is currently hosting, Mubarak's arrival at Boumediene airport last Monday morning was still widely reported as "yet another visit to Algeria".
As one Algerian diplomatic sources told Al-Ahram Weekly, "For the last few years, the Western media have exaggerated what was going on in Algeria. This series of visits by President Mubarak is a message to many countries in the world that the bad times will soon belong to the past."
According to Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, who had arrived in Algiers last Thursday to take part in the OAU ministerial meeting, Egypt is "clearly keen to support Algeria's attempts to bypass the crisis in which it was embroiled". "The simple fact is that Algeria is an important Arab and African country which could well take on a prominent role [in regional politics], and we are willing to help it overcome the events of the past," said Moussa.
In addition to making a point of this vote of confidence in the "new developments in Algeria under President Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika", Egyptian diplomacy is also taking a particular interest in encouraging warmer relations between Algeria and both Morocco and France -- the two countries which are of most obvious geo-political relevance to Algiers.
Fringe benefits: Mubarak meets with Bashir in what is described as a "sustainable improvement in relations"; conferring with Anan; and Bouteflika
With his third visit to the Algerian capital in less than one month, Mubarak has also set the tone for greater political and economic cooperation between both the governments and the private sectors of the two countries.
"President Mubarak's visits have certainly given new impetus to relations between the two countries, which in the past were always good," commented Abdel-Moneim Sa'udi, Egypt's ambassador to Algiers.
According to Sou'di, there are already several signs of this "upbeat interest in improving relations". "Egypt and Algeria are now revising their mechanism and frameworks for economic cooperation, to see how they can make them work for even closer cooperation between the two countries," Sou'di said.
Mubarak's visit to Algeria also provided an ideal opportunity for a meeting, on the fringes of the OAU summit, with a number of African leaders to discuss issues of both bilateral and multi-lateral interest.
Of these, Mubarak's long-awaited meeting with Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir, which took place only hours after the Egyptian President had arrived in Algeria, was perhaps the most important.
The meeting was fairly brief. But it was also the unmistakable culmination of two years of intense diplomatic efforts to restore good relations between the two Nile Valley countries.
"We [President Bashir and I] are meeting in the framework of the contacts between Egypt and Sudan. We are constantly improving relations with Sudan and we hope that these relations will once again be as normal as they used to be," President Mubarak declared on leaving the meeting room.
As Sudan's Foreign Minister Mustafa Othman Ismail told the Weekly, "This meeting, which I have worked very hard to see happen, will certainly facilitate the job of my brother Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and I. We want to see our bilateral relations become as good as they should be."
Asked about the implications of this meeting, Foreign Minister Moussa replied, "I think that the coming days will witness a sustainable improvement in relations". And questioned as to whether this "sustainable development" could mean sending an Egyptian ambassador to Khartoum -- a post that has stood vacant since the mid-1990s -- as well as an exchange of visits between officials from the two countries, Moussa added, "All this is possible, although nothing has been firmly scheduled yet. But there are clear intentions that both sides are ready to make progress in bilateral relations."
According to Moussa, a broader definition of such progress would encompass a concerted and continuous Egyptian effort to encourage Sudanese national reconciliation.
On Saturday, Foreign Minister Moussa will be meeting in Cairo with representatives of the Sudanese opposition to discuss these reconciliation efforts.
Closer relations between Cairo and Khartoum are described by diplomats on both sides as something which could be counted on to bring greater stability to East Africa.
The need for stability in this, as in other parts of the continent, was one issue highlighted by Mubarak in his speech to the OAU summit, as was the need for closer economic cooperation as a means to make such stability possibly in this predominantly poor and heavily-indebted continent. These same concepts were reiterated in bilateral meetings which Mubarak held on the fringes of the summit with a number of African leaders, as well as with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Mubarak's visit to Algeria, which came to an end Tuesday afternoon, thus helped advance three key objectives of Egyptian foreign policy: stronger ties with the Arab countries of north of Africa, warmer relations with Sudan, and closer contact with as many African countries as possible.
