President calls for national dialogue on nuclear power
CAIRO: Egypt s ruling party used its annual conference this week for the twin purpose of distancing itself from Western policy in the region and promoting the president s son Gamal Mubarak, analysts say. At Thursday s closing session, President Hosni Mubarak, a key U.S. ally in the region, delivered a strong attack on foreign intervention in the Middle East in an appeal to popular sentiment. We live in a region which is going through a critical phase of disturbance and instability … which sees attempts to impose a new regional reality that does not suit the circumstances, conditions and priorities, and fails to see the challenges faced by its people, Mubarak said. The latest developments have proven the danger of the situation in our region, the Israeli aggression in Lebanon, the deterioration of the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, the situation in Iraq and Darfur …, he said, listing the main grievances behind growing anti-U.S. sentiment in the Arab world. Any talk of the war on terror must be accompanied by discussion on the root causes and a serious move to justly resolve them, he said in a direct swipe at the worldwide offensive launched by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Mubarak also said that Egypt would witness major constitutional amendments during the next parliamentary session due to start in October. The next parliamentary session will see the biggest and widest parliamentary amendments since 1980, which set the six-year terms for the president, Mubarak said in his closing address to the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) conference.
Samer Shehata, professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, told AFP that Mubarak was attempting to reach out to Arab public opinion, which has been increasingly critical of pro-Western regimes like Egypt s. A lot of this discourse is for local audiences because they know these are popular issues, he said. They know those issues will resonate with people and it will get them some support and it will make Egypt look like it s independent. The reasons for Egypt s newfound confidence have to do with the fact that U.S. Middle East policy has proven to be incredibly problematic, if not disastrous, said the Washington-based analyst who attended the party conference. The success of the Shiite militants of Hezbollah in resisting Israel s month-long offensive in Lebanon has also given the Egyptian regime more confidence in appearing to stand up to the West, Shehata said. The setback for Western policy in the region also saw bolder moves by the president to promote his son Gamal, who is already assistant secretary general of the ruling party and head of its powerful policy committee. Mubarak junior opened the three-day conference with an outspoken attack on Washington s ambitions to export Western-style democracy to the Middle East charging that it was an attempt to erase Arab identity.
Gamal Mubarak has always denied any ambition to succeed his father as Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad did his late father Hafez but the opposition has long charged that he is being groomed for the succession and analysts said his prominent role delivering a populist message at the conference was significant. I think what the National Democratic Party in Egypt is trying to do is to respond to some of the popular demands that they had for a long time neglected and the fact that now they are in the process of projecting a profile of a new leadership which must have credibility on a public level, said Waleed Kazziha, professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. Gamal s prominence at this year s conference – chairing discussion panels, giving speeches at the opening and closing sessions, and talking of international and regional issues – overshadowed any other potential successor. All this talk serves the purpose of popularizing the party and enhancing the chances of the new leadership, said Kazziha. The peppery statements about keeping the region independent of Western influence do not represent any real shift in Egypt s relationship with the United States, Shehata added. In fact there is probably a nod and a wink. When it really comes time to play hardball, we know where Egypt is. Egypt is on the side of the United States.
President Hosni Mubarak also called on Thursday for a national dialogue on using nuclear power as a source of energy, saying it was cheap and clean and could help Egypt manage its energy resources efficiently.
We must take more advantage of new and renewable energy sources, including the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and I call for a serious dialogue which takes into account the clean and cheap sources of energy available through nuclear technologies, the president said. We do not start from a vacuum, and we possess a knowledge of these techniques which enables us to proceed, he added. Egypt abandoned serious plans to develop nuclear power stations decades ago but it does maintain a small experimental reactor and it has never closed down the nuclear department at the Ministry of Electricity. It is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear activities are subject to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Authority, which raised some questions last year about research at the reactor. The country depends almost entirely on hydrocarbons for electricity production, especially natural gas from the Western Desert and the Mediterranean. But with oil and gas prices at current high levels internationally, the government is losing billions of dollars a year selling fuel to Egyptians at subsidized prices. Standard petrol costs LE 1.30 ($0.23) a liter. Agencies
