Issue No. 592
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27 June - 3 July 2002 Issue No. 592 Home news |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Responsibility for peace
FRANCE and Egypt have agreed on the need for quick action to resolve the Middle East crisis, reports Soha Abdelaty. On a tour of the region that began with Cairo, French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin told reporters, after meeting his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Maher, that the Palestinians and the Israelis had a responsibility to achieve peace in the region.
"Israel has to realise that it will not achieve security if it does not acknowledge the rights and aspirations of its Palestinian neighbours," he said. "The Palestinians realise that as long as Israel is not guaranteed its right to security and to live in peace in this region, they [the Palestinians] will not get their rights," De Villepin added.
De Villepin met President Hosni Mubarak on Monday and delivered a message to him from French President Jacques Chirac. The French official did not rule out the possibility that the two presidents might meet in the next few weeks, but said no date had been set. Maher, however, ruled out the possibility of the two leaders meeting in Canada at the G8 summit, when he announced that the present circumstances in the region would not permit the president to attend the meeting.
De Villepin clarified his country's position on the issue of holding an international conference. While stating that it could improve the situation, he said, after meeting Mubarak, "The aims should be clear: first of all, an independent and viable Palestinian state, existing side-by-side with Israel, with secure and recognised borders."
Arab thought repository
ON SATURDAY 22 June, members of the Arab Thought Foundation held a press conference to announce the convening of the First Conference for Arab Thought in Cairo from 27 to 29 October 2002. The conference, which will begin with a reception to be attended by President Hosni Mubarak, prominent Arab leaders and intellectuals and key Western figures, is the first in a series of conferences to be organised by the foundation in various Arab capitals.
The foundation -- an independent Non-Governmental Organisation, (NGO), with no political affiliations -- is an Arab businessmen's initiative aimed at fostering Arab cultural identity, regional development and the dialogue between East and West.
The foundation was born at the Arab Culture Conference held in Beirut in May 2002, when Saudi Prince Khaled Al-Faisal Bin Abdel-Aziz, the current chairman, called on Arab intellectuals to meet under the umbrella of an Arab thought body.
The foundation funds its own activities. Forty members, who are Arab businessmen, have each contributed $1 million to an endowment, whose income is to be used to finance foundation operations, leaving the principle untouched.
Embassy picket
ABOUT 30 people gathered outside the British Embassy on Tuesday, to protest the embassy's denial of visas to four students seeking medical treatment in Britain.
Ambassador John Sawers told the group of 30 protesters that the students' visas had been rejected because officials believed they were seeking entry to Britain for reasons other than medical treatment.
"We issue 95 per cent of the visas and refuse five per cent, and the four men came firmly in that five per cent and did not meet the laws passed by parliament," Embassy Spokesman Gareth Bayley said without elaborating.
The four students suffered eye injuries as a result of being hit by anti-riot police rubber bullets, during mass pro-Palestinian protests in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, in April. One student was killed by the police. The Health Ministry agreed to pay the students' medical and travel fees. The students said they had supplied embassy officials with all the necessary documents, including a ministerial decree, doctors' letters and confirmation of reservations at a London hospital.
Bayley said a visa officer had been made suspicious of the students by their conflicting accounts of the Alexandria protest and the subsequent injuries.
The students can apply again, but this time Bayley said "They should be in no doubt that their application has been refused."
One of the injured students, Mohamed Fawzi, was told by his doctor that he needed urgent surgery in order to avoid blindness.
Islamists back in court
AN EMERGENCY State Security Court on Monday began the retrial of a suspected Islamist militant jailed for fraud but cleared of charges of involvement in the murder of a policeman. Mahmoud Fouli was sentenced by a high state security court in January to five years in jail after being found guilty of falsifying documents. He was cleared of any involvement in the 1994 murder of policeman Ali Sabet in the southern town of Dayrut.
President Hosni Mubarak ordered the retrial by another chamber of the same court because the first trial failed to justify clearing Fouli of implication in the murder of the policeman. The court earlier said it had been lenient with Fouli's sentence because he had handed himself over to the authorities last year.
Sentences passed by state security courts cannot be appealed and can only be revoked or ratified by the president.
Meanwhile, Mubarak ratified the life sentence handed down against another Islamist, Rif'at Zidan, a fugitive who was tried in absentia in the same case and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for organising the attack. He allegedly led the military wing of the underground group, Al- Gama'a Al-Islamiya in the southern town of Minya.
Mohamed Abdel-Nazeer, recently extradited from Saudi Arabia, is being retried as an alleged member of the Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya. The retrial started on Sunday at a state security court. In 1994, Nazeer was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison, following a crackdown on the group, in the wake of the murder of Coptic Christians two years earlier.
In March 1992, alleged Gama'a members entered Sanabu village, 200 kilometres south of Cairo, and killed Copts at the start of a wave of Islamic violence that claimed the lives of at least 1,200 people in Egypt over more than six years.
Nazeer was arrested in 1992, but fled to Saudi Arabia the following year after he was released on bail.
Queen Boat retrial
THE RETRIAL of 50 men accused of "habitual debauchery" is scheduled to start on 2 July. The defendants, mostly in their 20s, will appear before a Misdemeanours Court in Cairo, charged with practising debauchery with men.
Last November the State Security Court sentenced 20 of them to two years in prison, one to one year, and acquitted 29 others. In May, President Hosni Mubarak ordered their retrial, saying the case did not fall under the jurisdiction of the State Security Court. However, Mubarak upheld the jail terms the State Security Court handed down to two other defendants in the same case. Sherif Farahat, the key defendant, was sentenced to five years in prison for "scorning religion" and "sexual practices contrary to Islam". The other defendant, Mahmoud Allam, was jailed for three years for "scorning religion".
The group was reportedly arrested following a Nile riverboat nightclub party in May 2001, but several defendants said they were arrested outside. Their trial has angered Western gay rights and human rights groups.
Tourism in focus
ALEXANDRIA hosted two significant meetings on tourism this week, reports Rehab Saad. The Council of the Arab Ministers of Tourism held one meeting and the strategic group affiliated to the World Tourism Organisation, (WTO), held the other.
On Sunday, the Council of Arab Ministers of Tourism, headed by Jordanian Minister of Tourism Taleb Refa'i, held its fifth conference in Alexandria to discuss ways of reducing the effects of 11 September on Arab tourism and encouraging inter-Arab tourist relations.
Recommendations included the need for cooperation in planning promotional campaigns to face harsh competition. According to the Arab ministers of tourism, this can never be achieved except by establishing joint Arab companies, to face conglomerates formed by tour operators abroad. To this end, a feasibility study for establishing two joint Arab companies, one for marketing and another for hotel management, will soon be initiated.
Minister of Tourism Mamdouh El-Beltagui said that the recommendations of the Council of Arab Ministers of Tourism should be put into effect. He said, "Not only will they encourage inter-Arab tourist mobility, they will also help establish a strong Arab economic entity capable of facing any challenges..."
The sixth meeting of the strategic group affiliated to the WTO discussed globalisation and its effect on tourism, the role of tourism in balancing the world's economic flow and the sustainable development of tourism.
Compiled by Shaden Shehab
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