Normalisation rejected MINISTER of Culture Farouk Hosni has turned down a request by Shalom Cohen, the new Israeli ambassador to Cairo, to pursue cultural normalisation. In a telephone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly Hosni confirmed that on Tuesday the Israeli ambassador had asked him to promote cultural cooperation programmes between Egypt and Israel and the exchange of visits between intellectuals. The minister said he told Cohen it was impossible to take such measures given Israel's policies in the occupied Arab territories. Hosni said he told the Israeli ambassador during their meeting he was well aware of how deeply Egyptian intellectuals opposed normalisation until a just and comprehensive solution was reached with the Palestinians and occupied Arab territories returned. According to an official present at the meeting Cohen began his meeting with Hosni by saying, "I suppose you expect that I came to lodge a protest against the film. In fact I came to ask about normalisation." The film in question is Adel Imam's recently released Al-Sifara fil Omara (The Embassy Is In the Building). Hosni responded by saying Egypt has full cultural and artistic freedom and cannot silence the creative output of intellectuals or artists even when they criticise the government. An Israeli member of the Knesset recently described the film as an insult against his country. New Wassat THE STATE Commissioners Authority (SCA), a limb of the Supreme Administrative Court, came out in favour of granting the Islamist-leaning pan-Arab New Wassat (Centre) Party a license to form. The court, the rulings of which are final, will issue its own decision on 2 October. Wassat's founders began moves to secure a license in 1996. At the time their requests were refused by the Political Parties Committee, the quasi-governmental body responsible for licensing political parties. Their second and third attempts, in 1998 under the name of the Egyptian Wassat and in 2004 as the New Wassat, were similarly rejected. The SCA recommendation is being interpreted by the party's founder Abul-Ela Madi, who left the Muslim Brotherhood in 1996 to form his own political party, as a significant development in their nine-year endeavour. Although the committee has only an advisory role the Supreme Court is bound to take its opinions into account. Madi believes the current political climate could well encourage the court to approve his party. "The political atmosphere," he noted, "has changed since our first application in 1996." Since then the authorities have repeatedly examined the political and ideological affiliations of the would- be founders of the party and are now convinced, Madi believes, that they will not provide a backdoor for the Muslim Brotherhood. The would-be party's founders include several university professors, Copts and a number of women. The SCA's recommendation, observers argue, could indicate a new approach by the regime towards the Islamic movement as it moves to encourage integration perhaps along the lines of the Moroccan and Turkish models. Engineers' next move DOZENS of engineers vowed on Monday to escalate confrontation with the government should a recent court ruling in their favour fail to be implemented, reports Mona El-Nahhas. After being refused admittance to the syndicate building the participants met in the street to discuss options in their decade-long struggle against the sequestration imposed on the Engineers Syndicate. Wael El-Saqqa, chairman of the Jordanian Engineers Syndicate, attended the conference and expressed solidarity with the Egyptian engineers and the Engineers Against Sequestration Group, the meeting's organisers. The Administrative Court ruled in December that the syndicate, placed under judicial sequestration in 1995, could hold an emergency general assembly as a preparatory step towards staging syndicate elections. Minister of Irrigation Mahmoud Abu Zeid, in his capacity as the syndicate's supervisor, and the 93-year-old custodian Ahmed Moharram, contested the ruling. The Administrative Court last week quashed their appeal. The meeting resolved to set an eight-day deadline for the convening of the general assembly, after which they would resort to the courts in an attempt to sue Abu Zeid, said Omar Abdullah, spokesman for the Engineers Against Sequestration. The syndicate has more than 300,000 members and they are all determined, Abdullah told the Weekly, to secure an end to the sequestration. In a short telephone call with Abdullah on Tuesday morning Abu Zeid promised to exert all efforts towards ending the 10-year-long impasse, provisionally setting December as the date for elections. The minister's promise has been seen by some as further evidence of a rapprochement between the government and the Muslim Brotherhood -- a powerful presence within the syndicate -- ahead of September's presidential elections. Elections postponed COUNSELOR Mohamed Hanaa El-Mansi, chairman of the judicial board that supervises professional syndicate elections, decided on Sunday to form a committee to review voter lists at the Press Syndicate. The action comes before elections deciding the new head of the syndicate, a post currently occupied by Galal Aref. The committee comprises five judges in addition to syndicate administrative director Said Hosni, registrar Amina Oweis and the administrative director of the judicial board Mustafa Mohamed Mustafa. El-Mansi gave the committee a month to complete its work. His decision effectively postpones the Press Syndicate elections indefinitely. Gond Allah IN THE latest development in the Gond Allah (Soldiers of God) case, Mamdouh Ismail, lawyer for the 18 detainees, called on the president to determine their whereabouts and welfare. The 18 detainees began a hunger strike on 20 June after which, according to Ismail, they were transferred from Torah Prison to undisclosed locations. Ismail also said he had filed an appeal with Amnesty International and that Amnesty's representative in Cairo had promised to lodge a complaint with the Ministry of Interior and to request permission to visit the detainees. In 2003 the Egyptian police had arrested 43 Jihad members and charged them with founding a new terrorist cell, Gond Allah. The case was referred to the military prosecutor who filed charges against the defendants, including conspiracy to attack US and Israeli interests in Egypt. Ismail says he has submitted a complaint to the military prosecutor-general demanding his clients be tried immediately or else released.
