Briefs

---

Cairo-Kabul ties

ALTHOUGH Egypt and Afghanistan have agreed to step up cooperation, the two nations are not yet ready to upgrade the level of their diplomatic ties. On Tuesday in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit and his Afghani counterpart Abdullah Abdullah held a two-hour session on the promotion of bilateral ties. "We discussed our bilateral relations at length, and what Egypt could do to support the Afghani people in stepping over the hard times, the human tragedy, that it has lived with for a long time," Abul-Gheit said during a joint press conference with Abdullah at the foreign ministry.

According to both foreign ministers, Egypt will be providing Afghanistan with technical assistance vis ˆ vis efforts to upgrade the quality of education in that country. Economic cooperation may also be on the rise, with potential business opportunities opening up for Egyptian contractors in Afghanistan.

That said, both ministers admitted that they have not agreed to upgrade the level of their countries' diplomatic ties "yet".

According to Abdullah, "we have functioning diplomatic ties and we hope to take it to the ambassadorial level soon."

Serious efforts

FOREIGN Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit said Tuesday that "serious and systematic efforts are being undertaken" to release Mohamed Sanad, the Egyptian labourer who was abducted by an Iraqi militant group over two weeks ago.

Abul-Gheit admitted that progress on these efforts was, at one point, interrupted, but expressed hope that good news was on the way.

Tycoon arrested

YASSIN Aglan, a business tycoon who fled Egypt three years ago, was delivered to Egypt by Syria on Monday. Syrian police detained Aglan after he was found guilty of holding three fake passports. Syria decided to hand Aglan over to Egypt upon a request it received from Egyptian Interpol.

Egypt informed Syria that Aglan fled the country to evade a court ruling sentencing him to 15 years in jail on charges of bank fraud and obtaining LE300 million in loans without providing adequate collateral in return.

Aglan is one of 31 defendants in what came to be known as the "loan deputies" case. This included several businessmen, bankers and investors who were convicted of rampant banking fraud and graft, most of whom were sentenced to different jail terms.

Horus priest surfaces

WHILE laying the foundation stone of a new mosque in the Al-Basriya area of north-east Cairo's Ain Shams district, reports Nevine El-Aref, workers stumbled upon a 26th dynasty tomb.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said the tomb belongs to priest Ankh- Khonsu Deirt Hur, whose name means "the creation of the god Horus". Inside its burial chamber a large basalt sarcophagus holding the deceased's skeleton was found, along with four canopic jars. Sabri Abdel-Aziz, head of ancient Egyptian antiquities at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that gold fragments dedicated to the goddess Isis and the god Horus have also been unearthed.

Due to the high rate of subterranean water in the area, however, the tomb had decayed, and its wall paintings were in poor condition.

To protect the tomb, it may have to be dismantled, restored and transferred to the open-air museum in Matariya, where a collection of 26th dynasty tombs is exhibited.

Three years ago, while a man was laying the foundation of his new house, another 26th dynasty tomb, belonging to the high carpenter of the royal palace, was found in the same area, leading some scholars to postulate that Al- Basriya could have been a 26th dynasty necropolis.

Gold mystery

AFTER a three-month search of the Egyptian Museum's basement, the committee in charge of the investigation confirmed that 36 gold bracelets and two gold rings dating back to the Roman Empire had disappeared.

Investigations carried out by both the administrative and general prosecutor revealed that the gold objects disappeared from showcase numbers 24 and 25 in hall number 4 on the museum's second floor. The gold bracelets, found in 1905 in the Kom Abu Bello area in the Delta governorate of Beheira, are snake-shaped, and decorated with coloured precious stones. In 1976, eight of these bracelets were put on display in a special exhibition at the museum itself, while another two travelled abroad in 1979 as part of an exhibition of Pharaonic gold held in the Netherlands. In 1984, the pieces travelled to Japan for an exhibition and came back that same year.

Ten years later, during a computerised documentation project of the museum's displays, the 38 items were not found.

They were in the care of senior keeper Soheir El-Sawi, who told the investigation that she was unclear about all the items under her charge until October 2001 when she was transferred to the SCA's research centre; at that point, she said, she assigned two of her colleagues to inventory the collection in her custody.

The missing items weigh 2.5kg; their insurance policy is worth LE150 million.

Over the next week, prosecutors will interview former SCA secretary-general Gaballa Ali Gaballa, who is currently serving as the culture minister's archaeological consultant, as well as Zahi Hawass, the current SCA secretary- general, and former directors of the Egyptian Museum, Mamdouh El- Damati and Mohamed Saleh.