Dina Ezzat monitors increasing signs of a maturing Egyptian interest in Europe It has been a time of intensive talks between Cairo and key European counterparts. In the span of four weeks, Egypt has aggressively engaged several European interlocutors with an eye on enhancing its communication with them both at the bilateral level as well as the level of Egypt's comprehensive relationship with the entire European Union (EU). Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit, who arrived in Vienna, the January to June 2006 chair of the EU, was in London last week for talks with the current chair of the influential European bloc. Meanwhile, a high-level delegation was in Cairo to kick-start the Egyptian-European Union negotiations on the Enlarged Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) initiative presented by the EU in light of its historic enlargement in May 2004 and which aims to prevent the emergence of a new dividing line between the enlarged union and its eastern and Mediterranean neighbours. Egypt is expecting another EU call to address the issue soon. It is also planning to send a delegation to Brussels within a few days to prepare for Egyptian and other Arab participation in the 10th anniversary of the wider umbrella of the European- Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Partnership to take place in the Spanish city of Barcelona in November. Moreover, the foreign and defence ministers recently received the secretary-general of NATO for talks on potential future cooperation between this politicising security organisation of the European Union and the US. Earlier in the week, the foreign minister visited Moscow in pursuance of reviving and revitalising the Egyptian-Russian dialogue and with an eye on engaging partners in Europe from within and outside the EU. "Egypt is particularly keen on its relations with the Europeans. We make a point of keeping our channels of communications open with them and we work on systematically exchanging views on key issues," Abul-Gheit said this week before starting his two-leg European tour of Moscow and Vienna. What Abul-Gheit did not say, foreign diplomats did, on background. They said that despite the positive statements, Cairo feels uncomfortable about the evolution of its relationship with the US and is as such pursuing closer rapport with increasingly influential European neighbours. Assistant Foreign Minister Nihad Abdel-Latif insists that Egyptian-European relations "have been strategic and deep for decades." He, however, agrees that there is more effort being invested to further promote the relationship "in the best interests of both sides" within the past few years. The growing interest of Egypt in its European neighbours is not only prompted by the search for close strategic allies at a time when both Jordan and Saudi Arabia seem to be progressively stripping away a large share of the status Egypt used to monopolise in Washington as the Middle East's most important ally. Egypt is also hoping to gain a foothold in the growing and expanding new security arrangements that are being exacted by both NATO and the EU around the Mediterranean. "It is worrying that these new security arrangements, especially those pursued by NATO, tend to divide the Arab world into Arab Gulf countries and Mediterranean Arab states. This is harmful to collective strategic Arab and security interests and as such Egypt should not shy away from engaging NATO despite the sensitivity involved in managing ties with a Western security body, or any other concerned organisation, to make sure that unfavourable arrangements are not being made on the ground," argued Mohamed Shaker, a prominent Egyptian diplomat and founder of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs (ECFA). "The dialogue with NATO should be a collective Arab dialogue." This, Shaker said, is what ECFA plans to propose in a seminar it will host on talks with NATO representatives in Cairo at the end of the year. Meanwhile, Egypt has another long list of objectives for closer relationship with Europeans on the political, economic, security and cultural front. It seeks open markets, even at a tough competitive level, cooperation in demining the northern Egyptian coast of over 20 million landmines planted during World War II and coordination in the combat of terrorism and the elimination of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The European side is impressed by Egypt's growing interest. Like Egypt, the Europeans are keen on establishing a close relationship with its southern neighbours for purposes of combating illegal migration, streamlining the required legal migration and enhancing development south of the Mediterranean to contain social frustration that results from lack of development and leads to illegal migration and violence. Obviously, through Egypt, the Europeans feel they can play an effective role -- be it direct or indirect -- in key regional political issues, especially the Arab- Israeli conflict and Iraq. Cairo's favourite example is the recent coordination between Cairo and Paris in relation to the developments of Syrian-Lebanese relations in the wake of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri. "I think we can cooperate in the areas of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in Cairo earlier in the week. But as Egyptian diplomats and commentators say repeatedly, mutual interests require close consultations to clarify exact objectives and ways to achieve them. "There are so many ambiguities in relation to what NATO, for example, wishes to get out of this dialogue with a group of Arab countries initiated since 1994 but which has been given momentum recently," commented political science professor Hassan Nafaa. According to Nafaa's analysis, NATO is not being clear and Egypt is still uncertain. Egyptian officials admit that there is a limit to how far Cairo would want to proceed in its relationship with NATO. "NATO has a close relationship with Israel. Arab countries, including Egypt, are not interested in pursuing military cooperation," one diplomat said. Moreover, Egyptian officials and commentators are frank about the differences they have with their European interlocutors when they discuss the war on terror, the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the enforcement of human rights and democracy. They say that when the Europeans talk about human rights, they wish to include the rights of gays and to eliminate capital punishment whereas Cairo is not interested in these matters at all. More importantly, when the Europeans, within the EU, NATO or even during the ENP talks, refer to terrorism, it is "Islamic fundamentalism" and when they talk about weapons of mass destruction it is Iran, not Israel, that they have in mind. When in Cairo last week, Scheffer reiterated what every European, and for that matter American, official says in press briefings, that they are not at all interested in imposing anything. But as negotiating diplomats say from experience when reaching contractual agreements with the Europeans, it is never an issue of imposing the rules but rather of trading rules, often political, for economic gains.
