Egypt rebuffs US over regional reform

Egypt rebuffs US over regional reform

Brian Whitaker
Monday March 8, 2004
The Guardian

Democratic reform cannot be imposed on the Middle East from outside, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, told Tony Blair yesterday, rebuffing US proposals for the region.

"The president reiterated that any modernisation has to stem from the traditions and the culture in the area," a spokesman for the Egyptian embassy in London, Ayman al-Kaffa, told Associated Press.

"There is no magic wand that you can use to bring democracy overnight and definitely it cannot be dictated," Mr Kaffas added, though he said Egypt would welcome US and European support "to help the nations in the area reach peace and prosperity".

The statement came after a low-profile meeting between the president and the prime minister at Chequers yesterday, which lasted about an hour.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1164206,00.html

(I wish I were better at photoshop...)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L08601621.htm

PARIS, March 8 (Reuters) - U.S. plans for political reform in the Arab world could encourage violence and cannot succeed without an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in remarks published on Monday.

"That is the danger they (the Americans) do not seem to understand," he told the Paris newspaper Le Figaro.

"An initiative imposed from abroad would be rejected by the peoples concerned and would lead to anarchy in the whole region, from Morocco to Pakistan," he said in an interview.

"That would play into the hands of terrorism, which will not be confined to the Middle East but will reach Europe and the United States. If the extremists win, you can forget democracy," Mubarak added.