President Hosni Mubarak's visit to the Republic of Ireland, the first leg on a European tour that would also take him to France and Germany, is an unprecedented event. This is the first time that an Egyptian head of state pays an official visit to Ireland. And, it is long overdue. The close link between the 'English' colonisation of Ireland and Egypt goes back a long way. Egypt, as a former British protectorate, had a natural affinity with Ireland -- technically, the world's first 'English' colony -- the Irish nationalists were careful always to call British colonialism, English not British colonialism. Be that as it may, the sentimentality and nostalgia surrounding colonialism is not the main purpose of Mubarak's visit to Ireland. Contemporary Ireland has a dynamic economy, one of the most vigorous in Europe today. Ireland today is a very different country than it was barely three decades ago. It is in this context that Mubarak's trip to Ireland is of special importance. Egypt needs to learn from the Irish experience. From one of Europe's poorest and least developed countries, Ireland now boasts one of the continent's most sophisticated economies. Politically, too, the Irish peace process might be viewed as a model for the Middle East peace process -- or at least, the pitfalls of the Irish peace process can be avoided in any future Arab-Israeli settlement. The Republic of Ireland is the embodiment of how a relatively poor and underdeveloped country can prosper when it joins a regional economic grouping. The Irish economic miracle could not have taken place without the European Union. Ireland was one of the countries that benefited the most from its belonging to the EU. The Irish economic success is a reminder that regional economic integration is of vital importance to the economies of the southern Mediterranean. It is high time that Arab countries form a regional economic grouping. And, maybe then the economies of the Arab countries will benefit somewhat from the economies of scale. The Arab region has a lot of economic potential and, like Ireland, it too can lift itself out of the cycle of poverty and underdevelopment. The good old days of Lady Gregory, the driving force of the Irish Literary Revival Movement, who wrote a pamphlet entitled Urabi and his Household, was a great defender of the Egyptian nationalist revolution of 1881-1882 and its leader Ahmed Urabi Pasha. Lady Gregory, wife of the governor of what was then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, made sure that Urabi was sent into exile in the Indian Ocean island -- then a colony of Britain. Another Irish nationalist with deep and sincere sympathies with the Egyptian nationalist revolution was Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who wrote The Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt and who, together with Lady Gregory, stood with the nationalists following the occupation of Egypt in 1882 and paid for the British Lawyer A M Broadley to defend the Urabists at their trial following the occupation thus preventing Egypt's Khedive Ismail from hanging them and organising for their exile to Ceylon, where Lord Gregory was the British governor-general. The historical links between Egypt and Ireland go back a long way, and today Mubarak rekindles this old friendship. The future promises closer cooperation and economic collaboration between Ireland and Egypt. Mubarak's Irish visit points to a new and more vibrant phase of Irish- Egyptian relations.
