JERUSALEM: Egypt s Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, who is a candidate to head UNESCO, said he was prepared to visit Israel, after stirring a row by saying he would burn its books, in an interview published on Friday.
If you invite me, if you send me an invitation, I will come, he told Israel s mass-circulation newspaper Yediot Aharonot.
But Hosni warned that such a visit should be carefully prepared, up to the last detail, because of the outcry it would create in Egypt.
Hosni came under fire last month from Israel and the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre for saying in parliament that he would burn Israeli books if he found any in libraries in Egypt.
In his interview, Hosni reiterated he would not allow distribution of Israeli books or movies in Egypt. I m not willing to have a cinema burned down in Cairo or Alexandria because an Israeli film is shown there, he said.
Israeli works are rarely translated and no Israeli-made film – even pacifist – is shown in Egypt, where a total boycott is imposed on all artists and intellectuals from the Jewish state.
Hosni, culture minister for the past 21 years and close to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, is accused by Islamists in Egypt of being too liberal and also shunned by intellectuals hostile to the regime.
Several Arab and European states, including France, have expressed their support for Hosni s candidature to head the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. -AFP
