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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Interview Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Summit talks
LIBYAN leader Muammar Gaddafi was in Egypt yesterday on a brief visit for talks with President Hosni Mubarak on regional and bilateral issues. Meeting at Marsa Matrouh, near the Egyptian-Libyan border, the two presidents also discussed efforts to end the 17-year civil war in Sudan.Both Cairo and Tripoli have offered to mediate between Khartoum and the National Democratic Alliance, the umbrella organisation grouping the northern opposition and the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Army in the south.
The visit was Gaddafi's first to Egypt since the UN suspended last April economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed against his country since 1992. The Libyan leader was last in Egypt in March, shortly before Libya handed over two of its nationals suspected of bombing a PanAm flight over Lockerbie in 1988.
First closure
ISRAEL'S decision to seal off the West Bank town of Hebron was the first closure ordered by the new government. The decision followed the shooting of two Jewish settlers by unidentified gunmen. The two people, from the Jewish enclave of Tel Romeida, were taken to hospital in Jerusalem immediately.The closure prevents Palestinians from entering or leaving Hebron and comes after a curfew was clamped late on Tuesday in the Israeli-controlled town centre.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the shooting, saying it was the work of Palestinian militants. It was the first such attack since the arrival of Barak to office one month ago. Palestinians said that Barak could help prevent such attacks by implementing the Wye River land-for-security accord.
All roads lead
YESTERDAY, in Damascus, hundreds of intellectuals and admirers accompanied the body of Iraqi poet Abdel-Wahab Al-Bayyati to his final resting place at Muhieddin Ibn Arabi's Mosque. Al-Bayyati, born in Iraq in 1926, died of a heart attack in the early hours of Tuesday morning in his home in Damascus where he had taken residence for the past two years.
Along with his two other Iraqi compatriots, Nazik Al-Mala'ika and Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab, Al-Bayyati championed the poetry of taf'ila based on the classical Arabic metres now freed from the straight jacket of the hemistitch patterns, dispensing partially or wholly with rhyme. Al-Bayyati has some 35 collections of poetry to his name, the first of which is Mala'ika Wa Shayatin (Angels and Devils), 1950, the last being Al-Bahr Ba'id, Asma'uh Yatanahhud (The Sea is Distant, I Hear It Sighing), 1998.
Al-Bayyati had arranged before his death to be buried in the Mosque of Muhieddin Ibn Arabi, the mystic, philosopher, poet and sage who was born in Andalusia in 1165 AD and died in Damascus in 1240 AD. According to Ibn Arabi's teachings, each person has a unique path to the truth, which unites all paths in itself. It is only appropriate that Al-Bayyati whose life and work were an extended quest should be laid to rest in the shadow of Ibn Arabi.
