CAIRO: US President George W. Bush flies on Saturday to Egypt where he will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after celebrating Israel’s 60th anniversary and address the World Economic Forum on the Middle East.
Arriving in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh via oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia at the end of a regional tour, Bush will also meet Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the capitalist networking jamboree.
Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been mooted to attend, but with little Middle East peace progress to justify a three-way summit, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres will be leading the Israeli delegation.
The regional tour, Bush’s second since January, comes in the wake of last year’s Annapolis conference aimed at restarting the stalled Middle East peace process, but hopes of a deal by the end of Bush’s term in January are dwindling.
The WEF meeting, dubbed the Davos of the Middle East, will bring together 1,500 people, including heads of state, business leaders and ministers from 55 countries, under the theme “learning from the future.
But the region’s future is as uncertain as ever, with the Israel-Palestinian conflict increasingly intractable, Lebanon rocked by eight days of sectarian bloodshed and Egypt seeing a wave of social unrest over skyrocketing prices.
Egypt, which alternates hosting the annual WEF with Jordan, has earned international praise for the economic reforms of Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif but the benefits of those reforms have yet to trickle down to the majority of the population.
Instead, rising global food prices have hit the country’s most disadvantaged, leading to strikes and demonstrations in spite of the government increasing subsidy payments from LE 20 billion ($3.7 billion) in 2003 to LE 125 million ($23.3 billion) in 2008.
Galal Zorba, chairman of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, told AFP that “hopefully the leaders of the world will see some solutions to world and Middle East problems.
“Is there hope for a permanent solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict]? What about rising food and oil prices? Nothing is going to be resolved [at the WEF] but you will get a feeling of what the directions are.
The forum, to be attended by Mubarak’s son Gamal who many tip to be the next president, will also be a chance for Egypt to show off the pace and benefits of its economic reforms in a turbulent region.
“Egypt is taking the lead in economic reform, Zorba said. “Egypt is an important model for the region.
The WEF, which runs from Sunday to Tuesday, will also be attended by various dignitaries including Middle East peace Quartet envoy Tony Blair, amid fading hopes for an Israel-Palestinian peace deal.
“It is now clear that the promises President Bush once made about bringing about progress in peace talks before leaving the White House have come to nothing, analyst Wahid Abdel Meguid wrote in the state-owned Al-Ahram weekly.
Abdel Meguid, who heads the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, asked those gathering in Sharm “to imagine a regional war raging from the east Mediterranean to the Gulf.
“Even bankers and businessmen – who make up the bulk of the Davos club – should be worried.
