Reaction to attacks in US reveals rift between Egypt's leaders, people |
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| CAIRO — Reaction in Cairo to the terrorist attacks that hit the United States has revealed the wide rift that separates the Egyptian government, a key US ally, and the man in the street. “Mabruk! Mabruk! (congratulations),” shouted people huddled at shop windows where television sets showed incredible images of airliners crashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on Tuesday. “It's the best thing that's happened since the October war,” said Gawish Abdul Kerim, a taxi driver for an Asian embassy in the capital. Abdul Karim was referring to the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war when Egyptian forces made a surprise attack on the Israeli army across the Suez Canal. “Bullseye,” commented two taxi drivers as they watched the footage. Such reactions contrasted with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's immediate condemnation of the attacks. “I'm very sad,” Mubarak told reporters, describing the attacks as “unimaginable” and “horrible.” “This terrorism is dangerous and we denounce terrorism. We denounce terrorism under any circumstances,” he said after chairing an emergency cabinet meeting devoted to the attacks. The Egyptian leader, who has survived at least 10 assassination attempts since he became president in 1981, said “nobody could have imagined” such attacks, adding the United States is “a friendly country” to Egypt. Most attempts were by Islamic militants. Mubarak has continued the historic policy of openness to the West led by his predecessor Anwar Al Sadat, which led to the signing in 1979 of the first peace treaty between an Arab country and Israel. A key ally of the United States, which provides $1.3 billion a year in aid to Egypt, Mubarak has hosted many high-level Israeli-Palestinian talks to try to resolve a conflict which could spill over to the entire region. At the risk of appearing as the “initiator of meetings invariably bound to fail,” he has again proposed Egypt as a venue for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to meet, a Western diplomat said. To be sure, the Egyptian authorities have criticised US President George W. Bush, but mainly for his lack of initiative to end the conflict. Such a position contrasts sharply with the battle cry of Egyptian university students in Cairo, who have condemned both Americans and Israelis in the same breath and burned the flags of both countries. It also is in contrast with the government press, a pressure-release valve and middle road between the official position and the man in the street, which has described the Middle East conflict as “an American-Arab conflict.” The state press has published a photo-montage showing Peres, the winner of the Nobel peace prize, in a Nazi uniform each time the Israeli minister has visited Egypt to meet Arafat and Mubarak. “Mubarak must know that the people can no longer be humiliated,” a university student in Cairo said, trying to explain his satisfaction over the news of the attacks and the frustration of ordinary people with US supremacy. Without rejoicing over the attacks that may have killed thousands of civilians, an editorialist with the government daily Al Ahram wondered if the events marked the “beginning of a war against globalisation. “The real reason behind the terrorism is the widening of the gap between the north and the south, this wave of consumer madness which invades the world, which encourages extremism of all kinds,” he wrote.
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