CAIRO: Egypt’s powerful intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is the one man who, discreetly and behind the scenes, can speak to both Israel and Hamas and eventually broker an to end the fighting in Gaza.
It is inside an impersonal reception room in Egypt’s vast intelligence complex just outside Cairo that he has been weaving the dialogue that would normally be impossible between enemies Hamas and Israel.
“I think we’re getting there, he told a senior European official on Wednesday, after a visiting Hamas delegation tentatively agreed to the “broad outlines of an Egyptian truce plan for Gaza.
And on Friday, Suleiman again received Israel’s chief negotiator Amos Gilad, also an army intelligence general, in what is hoped to be the final round of tortuous discussions that will lead to Israel and Hamas accepting a ceasefire.
“Suleiman is clear, structured, subtle, credible to all and thus respected by all, the former head of a European intelligence agency who has worked frequently with Suleiman told AFP, requesting anonymity.
While unlikely to be nominated for the Noble Peace Prize, he could enter the Guinness Book of Records for orchestrating the most Israel-Palestinian truces, often short-lived, over the past 10 years.
Since the eruption of the second intifada in 2000, Suleiman engineered periods of calm in 2001, 2003 and 2005 as well as the six-month truce whose expiry in December heralded the latest conflict.
And the next truce, possibly the most important yet, is already on the horizon.
It is not easy to position Suleiman within a regime that is as authoritarian as it is opaque. But it is certain that he belongs to the inner circle of President Hosni Mubarak.
“Coming from the military, he is the eyes and ears of the president, with a sharp sense of Egypt’s interests, says his European ex-colleague.
Five years younger than the “rais Mubarak, Suleiman could be a potential successor if the dynastic scenario of the president’s younger son Gamal inheriting power doesn’t play out, many political analysts had predicted.
Born in 1934 to a well-off family in the southern Egyptian town of Qena, Suleiman graduated from Cairo’s military academy in 1955. Appointed aide to Egypt’s military intelligence chief in 1988, he replaced his boss a year later.
In 1995, Suleiman advised Mubarak to ride in an armored car during a visit to Addis Ababa that shielded him from the fire of Islamist gunmen which killed the car’s driver.
During the 1990s and following the botched Ethiopian assassination attempt, Suleiman joined the efforts of the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies to crack down on Islamists, at home and abroad.
He also proceeded to target homegrown radical Islamist groups Gamaa Islamiya and Jihad after they carried out a string of attacks on foreigners that hit Egypt’s vital tourism industry hard.
Suleiman became the man for “special assignments, including the sensitive Israeli-Palestinian dossier, where his knowledge and authority supersedes that even of Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
He works like a card player, not needing to win every hand, as when Hamas ousted the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
“But he’s playing his hand once more, and this coming truce will be his triumph, said the European ex-intelligence chief.
