Newsreel

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Captives in Syria

ASSISTANT Foreign Minister Mahmoud Ouf has said that 73 Egyptian workers held in Syria following their illegal entry should be released soon.

The workers were arrested by Syrian authorities following illegal entry into the country in search of job opportunities.

The workers say their entry was legal according to a deal reached with Egyptian and Jordanian recruitment offices. Egyptian and Jordanian authorities are currently investigating the charges.

No specific date has been given for the expected release.

Qatari visit

THE EMIR of Qatar Hamad Bin Khalifa was in Cairo yesterday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak on an intensive agenda of regional concerns.

The emir, whose country currently occupies a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council and who has good communication channels with Damascus, was expected to consult with Mubarak on the recent developments concerning Syria's relationship with the international community in view of the accusations levelled at Damascus by several influential Western capitals, including Washington, of stirring unrest in Lebanon.

Khalifa and Mubarak were also expected to examine developments on the Palestinian issue in the wake of the aggravated security situation in Gaza as a result of the worsening Hamas-Fatah fighting. Qatar keeps close ties with Hamas leaders and it was expected that Cairo would request from Qatar to use its influence over the Hamas leadership to retrain its Gaza cadres.

The two heads of state are also expected to review bilateral cooperation which was the crux of the talks held in Cairo last month by Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad Bin Jassim.

Lebanese politics

JEAN-CLAUDE Cousseran, the special envoy of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Lebanon, is expected to arrive in Cairo on a mission to promote national Lebanese reconciliation. Cousseran is visiting Cairo as part of a regional tour which started in Lebanon. The trip aims to prepare for a meeting that Paris is planning to host later this month to help re-build confidence among Lebanese political factions.

While the proposed meeting is unlikely to be attended by any of the top Lebanese politicians, senior aides are expected to be delegated to France for a candid talk on the future of the country and the acute political crisis that has crippled the Lebanese economy and threatened a new wave of sectarian confrontation.

Egypt is expected to press upon Cousseran the need to prompt an inter-Lebanese accord over the composition of a fairly representative national unity government to allow for a smoother political climate ahead of expected presidential elections this autumn. The choice of a president for Lebanon is never an easy matter in view of the complex political calculus but traditionally Lebanon has had a president with close affiliations with Damascus.

The political tug of war between the government, representing the majority, and its opposition, led by Hizbullah, started in the wake of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon last summer. The opposition insists that the government is trying to sway the fate of Lebanon's political identity in line with the Western agenda for the Middle East. For its part the government is accusing the opposition of being a cat's paw for the Syrian regime which is perceived by the majority leaders in Lebanon as attempting to control the fate of the country. The majority is also accusing Syria of direct involvement in the killing of several Lebanese politicians, especially former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri.

Egyptian officials insist that any Lebanese reconciliation would have to take into consideration the views of all the political parties involved. However, Cairo is of the view that the opposition, no matter how influential, should not be taking major decisions without the consent of the authority of the government.

In another development, this week Egypt sent humanitarian aid to help victims and refugees fleeing the besieged Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr Al-Bared in Lebanon. Military confrontation between the Lebanese army and the combatants of a multi-national guerrilla, Fatah Al-Islam, has ravaged the camp for four weeks and forced thousands of refugees to flee.

Earlier this week, President Hosni Mubarak and Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora discussed political and military developments in Lebanon by telephone. In another phone call, Al-Siniora briefed Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif on developments in Lebanon.

For his part, Egyptian Ambassador to Lebanon Hussein Derar has also been conducting intensive negotiations in Lebanon to encourage the chances of political dialogue stimulated by Cousseran's mission and the diplomatic efforts exerted by Saudi Arabia and Iran, both of whom carry much influence over many political quarters in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Arab League sources have excluded immediate plans for Secretary-General Amr Moussa to resume suspended mediation for Lebanese reconciliation. Moussa has been in touch with Al-Siniora and Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an opposition figure.

Decision welcomed

THE ARAB League yesterday welcomed the Sudanese government's decision to accommodate a UN request to deploy some 20,000 hybrid peacekeepers in Darfur to secure the safety of civilians devastated by a four-year civil war which has left close to 200,000 people killed and millions displaced.

Egyptian officials have also expressed relief at the decision by Khartoum, saying the green light would abate an escalating political confrontation between the regime and the international community over the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit said the deployment of the hybrid peacekeepers should be coupled with a firm political process to engage all the conflicting factions in Darfur under the umbrella of an all-inclusive reconciliation deal. "A conducive political process along with the efforts to stabilise and secure the situation on the ground is the way to end this humanitarian crisis," Abul-Gheit said.

On Monday, President Hosni Mubarak discussed the situation in Darfur with visiting Chad President Idris Dibbi. A western neighbour of Sudan, Chad has been home to millions of refugees fleeing the fighting in Darfur.

Presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad said the two presidents discussed ways of relieving the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

Addressing representatives of Arab countries at the Arab League on Tuesday, Dibbi said a prompt containment of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur would help his country's resistance of international pressure to deploy international forces on the borders to protect Darfur refugees from warring fighters who cross the border to chase fleeing civilians.

Niqab wins

A CAIRO court has ruled that the American University in Cairo cannot ban a student wearing a niqab (veil revealing only the eyes) from entering its campus. Iman El-Zeini, who was banned from entering AUC because she wore the niqab, had filed a suit against the university. AUC had banned her from entering because of safety concerns, saying security had to see the face of the person entering its premises.

"The policy prohibiting face veiling was established by the university because all members of the AUC community have a basic right to know with whom they are dealing, whether in class, labs or anywhere else on campus. It is not a religious issue," the university said in a statement after the ruling.

A court ruled in El-Zeini's favour in 2001 but the AUC appealed. In 1994, the Ministry of Education officially banned the niqab in government universities but made an exception regarding religious institutions like Al-Azhar University.

Youngest bird flu death

A 10-YEAR-OLD has become the youngest Egyptian to die of bird flu. Her death on Saturday morning brought to 15 the number of victims in Egypt who have succumbed to the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, reports Reem Leila. The girl, Mayada Tohami, from the southern province of Qena, was found to be "very critical" and hospitalised "too late", Health Ministry spokesman Abdel-Rahman Shahin told Al-Ahram Weekly. The girl, who had been in direct contact with backyard poultry, was ill for more than 10 days, but had been treated with Tamiflu for only the past two days and had been on a respirator in a Luxor hospital. "Unfortunately she did not make it," Shahin said. According to Shahin, the girl, who fell ill on 1 June but whose diagnosis and life-saving treatment was delayed, was not well enough to be transferred to Cairo.

The highly pathogenic virus, which was first diagnosed in Egypt in February 2006, has killed 15 people out of the 35 cases reported to date, as well as extensively damaging the poultry industry and the economy as a whole. Around five million households in Egypt depend on poultry as a main source of food and income. Egypt has the highest number of confirmed human bird flu cases outside Asia. The government says it is conducting a vigorous campaign to combat the spread of the virus through vaccinations and raising awareness, but cases continue to appear.

Most of those who have fallen ill in Egypt were reported to have had contact with sick or dead household birds, primarily in northern Egypt where the weather is typically cooler than in the south. But in a sign of a change in how the disease may be occurring in Egypt, all but two of the past 15 human fatalities have been in the central or southern parts of the country. Bird flu experts in Egypt have said they would typically expect fewer human cases of the disease during Egypt's sweltering summer months, and in 2006 there was a roughly five-month summertime lull in human cases between May and October. "This is an unusual case during this weather and these temperatures," Shahin said of Tohami's case.

Congress deployed

CAIRO and the Arab League this week expressed dismay over a resolution adopted by the US Congress recognising the unilateral Israeli claim of the reunification of East and West Jerusalem following the occupation of East Jerusalem during the June 1967 War.

Hisham Youssef, cabinet chief of the Arab League secretary-general, and Alaa El-Hadidi, official spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said the resolution runs counter to the terms of international law in relation to the management of occupied territories and to relevant UN Security Council resolutions on the need to decide the fate of Jerusalem through a negotiated settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis.

The Arab League and Egypt maintain that East Jerusalem is the future capital of a Palestinian state.

Messages of concern were forwarded by Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa to the US administration and Congress.

Lobbying Holland

DURING consecutive talks with Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa this week in Cairo, visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen was pressed to encourage a more positive European approach towards the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Moussa and Abul-Gheit also stressed the need for The Netherlands to use its good offices with Israel to encourage a positive Israeli engagement of the Arab offer for talks to reach a final and fair settlement of the Arab-Israeli struggle upon the basis of the Arab peace initiative which calls for the Israeli withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and the establishment of a Palestinian state in return for full Arab-Israeli normalisation.