25 April - 1 May 2002
Issue No.583
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 25 April - 1 May 2002 Issue No.583 |
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From Cairo to Beijing
DURING a five-day visit to Egypt, China's Prime Minister Zhu Rongji held talks with top officials and concluded several bilateral cooperation agreements.
Following his meeting with President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday, Zhu called on the international community to take a firm stand on ending Israeli aggressions and implementing the UN Security Council resolutions that stipulate the withdrawal of Israeli troops from occupied Palestinian areas.
Zhu's talks in Cairo, especially those held with Prime Minister Atef Ebeid, focused on bilateral cooperation between Egypt and China. The two sides signed a strategic cooperation agreement in 1999 and have worked since on activating cooperation between both countries' business communities, increasing investments and improving the trade deficit. Zhu committed his country to removing obstacles that hinder Egyptian products from accessing the Chinese market and redressing the trade imbalance which is currently sharply tipped in China's favour.
Ebeid and Zhu witnessed the signing of three cooperation agreements in the fields of economics and technology, education and animal health. Ebeid said Egypt wants to see further bilateral cooperation in industrial production, joint marketing, tourism, health and medicine as well as scientific research.
Building security
PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak was briefed on Sunday by General Tommy R Franks, commander of the United States Central Command who is in charge of his country's campaign against terrorism. Franks also met with Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and Chief-of-Staff Lieutenant General Hamdi Weheiba, during his stop in Cairo.
Franks was on a "routine" regional tour to "maintain security relationships and military relationships" with Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Franks briefed local reporters after his meetings that his discussions evolved around bilateral "security relationships." Egypt and the US are cooperating regularly and closely on intelligence-sharing in the fight against world terror even though Cairo said that it will not be willing to commit troops on the ground as part of this framework. General Franks thanked Egypt for its help and said that Washington was "satisfied" with the results of its anti-terror campaign although it has yet to achieve all its goals.
He continued that the US had yet to decide whether Iraq will form the next target in the war on terrorism, a decision most Arab countries have made clear they will oppose.
Criminal not political
ON 18 APRIL, an Israeli was found dead with stab wounds near Al-Ma'gana camp, 10km from the Sinai resort of Nuweiba. According to the Interior Ministry, which arrested one man in connection with the case, the murder was not a result of the suspect's anti-Israeli sentiments but a "criminal" act. Hamdi Abdel-Khaleq Taha was arrested and confessed of murdering Meir Franco while under the influence of marijuana.
Taha, who was previously sentenced to a three year jail sentence for a drug-related case, told police he was fishing by the sea when a foreigner he did not know approached him to buy fish.
The two smoked marijuana, entered into an argument and Taha stabbed Franco with a fish knife he used to gut the fish. He subsequently fled the scene, unaware that the Israeli later died, the Interior Ministry statement later announced that Taha had confessed.
The body of Franko, 48, from Tel Aviv, was transferred to Israel on Saturday.
Largest digital library
THE NEW ALEXANDRIA Library or Bibliotheca Alexandrina may still have not opened its doors yet but members of the public accessed it on Saturday by visiting its website: www.bibalex.org. The digital library is three times larger than the Library of Congress.
Announcing the move, Ismail Serageddin, Alexandria Library director, told reporters that, "It is our intention that the library of Alexandria shall once again be a universal library, but not in an old-fashioned accumulating manner but in terms of how much we can ensure are accessible to as many people around the world as possible."
The digital library has four main components: a library of 10 billion web pages since 1996; an archive of American movies going back to 1903; a television archive of Egyptian and US networks; and a book-scanning facility that will allow the library to search its collection which holds so far 200,000 books.
The web page library has the capacity to store a total of 100 million megabytes or the equivalent of 100 million books.
"The Library of Congress, which is the current largest print library [in the world], has 26 million volumes...So [this collection] is larger in quantity than the Library of Congress," said Brewster Kahle, the founder of Internet Archive, a nonprofit corporation based in San Francisco, California who donated $5 million worth of computer software and hardware for the web page facility.
Serageddin said that the process of going digital was a key to realising the library's vision of universal access. It would also permit "the preservation of knowledge for future generations."
The Bibliotheca was due to open on 23 April, but President Hosni Mubarak postponed it indefinitely in solidarity with the Palestinians, saying that a celebration was inappropriate.
Refurbishing the SCA
WHILE inspecting the current restoration works executed at seven Islamic monuments in Islamic Cairo, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni launched the reconstruction of six new national museums in Sharm Al-Sheikh, Hurghada, Marsa Matrouh, Mansoura, Beni Suef, and Edfu, reports Nevine El-Aref. Each museum will have its own distinguished architectural style suitable to every individual city's environment.
In addition to a number of ethnographic artefacts, each museum will put on display a collection of archaeological objects that were unearthed from local sites or have been in storage for decades.
According to Zahi Hawass, the newly- appointed general-secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), four new archaeological departments were also created in order to organise the SCA's archaeological work. The departments will follow up international cases of archaeological theft, inspect locally stolen artefacts and check on their authenticity, supervise site management projects, and increase the public's archaeological awareness.
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