23 - 29 August 2001
Issue No.548
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 23 - 29 August 2001 Issue No.548 |
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Military visit
AS PART of a Middle East tour, Lt-Gen Tommy R Franks, head of the US Central Command, and a high- level military delegation arrived in Cairo on Saturday, coming from Amman, and met with Defence Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.
Defence sources told Amira Ibrahim that the visit was unofficial. "General Franks and Field Marshal Tantawi exchanged views on bilateral military cooperation," a source said. The meeting was attended by US Embassy officials and a number of Egyptian commanders.
Franks also met with Chief-of-Staff Gen Magdi Hatata and discussed joint military exercises. Egypt and the US have been conducting joint war games since 1981. The Bright Star exercise is the biggest and is organised every other year. In 1999, 11 countries, including Egypt and the US, took part in Bright Star which is expected to draw an even larger number of participants this year.
A report by the Associated Press said that Franks, during his visit to Jordan, met with King Abdullah early on Saturday at the monarch's seaside palace in the resort city of Aqaba.
Franks left on Tuesday from Sharm El-Sheikh airport to Yemen.
'Conciliation' fragments
DIVISIONS within political parties are not novel to the domestic political scene. The latest came this week hitting the ranks of the small National Conciliation Party (Al- Wifaq Al-Qawmi), with two men vying for leadership. The two are the party's chairman, Ahmed Shoheib, and Rifaat El-Agroudi, a founding member. The battle prompted the Political Parties Committee -- a semi-governmental body that licenses parties and oversees their activities -- to freeze Al-Wifaq's activities and suspend the publication of its newspaper, Al-Qarar. The suspension will continue until "those who claim party leadership reach a settlement," the committee said. The party was established in March 2000.
The party, which has a pan-Arab platform, was the first party to be licensed by the committee after almost 22 years of continually rejecting applications. Several opposition parties saw the light of day on the authority of court orders.
El-Agroudi accused Shoheib of "acting to alter the party's Nasserist orientation by seeking an alliance with outlawed groups" -- an allusion to the Muslim Brotherhood. He claimed that several meetings took place between Shoheib and Brotherhood figures seeking to use the party as a forum for their activities. Brotherhood sources dismissed the claim. "There has not been any contact between the Brotherhood and Al-Wifaq. We are not seeking any alliances or unions with them," Ma'moun El-Hodeibi, the Brotherhood's spokesman, told the Weekly on Monday.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Shoheib claimed that the committee's decision was not binding and threatened to take disciplinary action against El-Agroudi.
All is lost
THE SUPREME State Security Court sentenced tour guide Ali El-Sayed Moussa to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour for taking four German tourists hostage for four days in March in a desperate bid to win custody of his two sons living in Germany with his estranged German wife.
The court said that, in passing the sentence, it ordered the minimal possible penalty. Before the court pronounced its judgement on 16 August, Moussa complained to reporters that he continued to yearn for his children.
Police had promised Moussa that if he freed the hostages he would see his children, aged seven and three. After negotiations with police, Moussa surrendered, but he never saw his sons.
Moussa was accused of using force and intimidation to hold the tourists hostage after inviting them to his house in Luxor and surreptitiously slipping drugs into their food. He also used an unlicensed weapon.
Vicious vendetta
THREE men, pursuing a blood vendetta, butchered a 12- year-old boy in front of his mother on Saturday. The killers believed that the boy's father, who is in custody, had murdered one of their relatives.
The mother and the boy, Ahmed Shawqi, were passing through a field on their way home, near El-Badrashein village in Giza governorate, when one of the men put a gun to the mother's head while the two others cut the boy with axes.
The men were arrested and confessed to the murder.
Compiled by Shaden Shehab
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