Thought-provoking commentary fought for space this week with the more routine issues, writes Gamal Nkrumah State affairs once again dominated the headlines this week. President Hosni Mubarak met his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh specifically to tackle the prickly issue of the resumption of peace talks with Israel based on no pre-conditions. Al-Assad's visit comes less than a week after the Syrian president expressed his willingness to resume talks with Israel, from the point where they left off, following consultations with President Mubarak, Palestinian leaders and the United Nations Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen. "Presidential spokesman Maged Abdel-Fattah announced that the talks focussed on building a united stand of all the different Palestinian factions, noting Syria's unmistakable sway and influence with key Palestinian groups," noted the national daily Al-Akhbar in its Tuesday edition. The paper also revealed that the talks between the leaders of Egypt and Syria in Sharm El-Sheikh would also touch on the Iraqi question in the wake of last week's Sharm El-Sheikh conference. On Monday, President Mubarak met visiting Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov who is in Egypt on a three-day visit in which he also met his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Nazif and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit. It was clear from the coverage of the Egyptian press that the main focus of the trip was economic. Cementing trade and economic ties between Egypt and Russia took precedence over political matters. But Mubarak and Fradkov also explored means of activating Russia's role in the Middle East peace process. Egypt expects Russia to play a more dynamic role in the international Quartet committee which helped draft the roadmap for peace in the Middle East. "Mubarak and Fradkov discuss economic ties and the Middle East peace process", ran the front page banner of the national daily Al-Ahram on Tuesday. "The Russian role in the Middle East peace process is pivotal," the paper stressed. Another topic of discussion between Egyptian officials and the visiting Russian dignitary was the rapidly increasing number of Russian tourists visiting Egypt's Red Sea resorts. Egypt today receives an estimated half a million Russian tourists annually who spend more than $300 million a year. Buoyant bilateral trade is set to expand even further. The 2003 trade turnover accounted for $416 million, including $377 million worth of Russian exports to Egypt. The visits by the Syrian leader and Russian premier also dominated the headlines of the third most read national daily Al-Gumhuriya. The paper, however, also gave extensive coverage to events in Iraq. "[Iraqi Foreign Minister Hochiar] Zibari survives a second assassination attempt and [Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi looks into the possibility of postponing the elections," ran an inside page headline of Al-Gumhuriya on Tuesday. "The Iraqi resistance movement claims that it still controls 70 per cent of Falluja," read another banner. On the domestic front, and in a most intriguing article in Al-Gumhuriya, Coptic Pope Shenouda III wrote frankly about depression as a new national pandemic -- and a national obsession. "What is depression? And what are its symptoms and causes?" Pope Shenouda asked. In the first of a three- part series, the pope shared his ideas about how prayer and uplifting spiritual thought can act as a powerful alternative to the malicious and often depraved mental processes that systematically generate a state of depression and despondency. The pope explored the various dimensions of depression which he classified into four categories: spiritual depression; natural depression; false depression and clinical depression. Spiritual depression, the pope wrote, was to a great extent due to the yearning for spiritual upliftment. "It is temporal and rarely lasts for long," Pope Shenouda said. "And it often ends in joy." Natural depression, he wrote, "was when one grieves over the death of a relative or dear friend. Or when one suffers from a debilitating illness or excruciating pain." And false depression, the pope warned "was when mere mortals try in vain to indulge in the pleasures of the carnal senses... It is a blessing in disguise," the pope concluded. Unfulfilled carnal desires and unrequited love are often salutary. Equally, the pope stressed, mad ambition and wayward behaviour ultimately lead to depression. Indeed, the papal admonition reminded one of the words of the immortal British bard William Shakespeare: "Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head." The papal story coincides with a growing interest among veteran journalists in the country about the touchy subject of depression, once treated as taboo, or as an exclusively Western phenomenon. Depression, judging from the pundits proclamations, has finally come home to roost in Egypt. A visiting plague that has taken the country by storm was the apparently unexpected arrival of swarms of red locusts that have threatened to devour everything in their path. "[Agriculture Minister Ahmed] El-Leithi detonates more bombs concerning the locust question," wrote the opposition daily Al-Wafd. Those who tried to combat the onslaught of locusts were taken unawares because they didn't expect an attack from the west," Al-Wafd disclosed. "Egypt faces another wave of locust attacks when the dreaded creatures re-appear on their return journey next May," the paper continued. In much the same vein, the sensationalist independent weekly Al-Qahira wrote "An exceptional festival in spite of the locusts", ran a front- page headline in the paper's Tuesday edition. The article was a curtain-raiser for the 28th Cairo Film Festival in which three Egyptian films will be contending for a prize. "Condoleezza... the black spinster dreams of ruling the world," was the shocking lead banner splashed on the front-page of Al-Qahira. The banner was in deplorably poor taste and written presumably in racist and sexist jest -- yet another example of the kind of yellow journalism that Al- Qahira seems to excel at. The weekly October was far more stately, focussing once again on national affairs and diplomacy. "Mubarak builds bridges with Africa and Europe," read the lead article by Editor-in-Chief Ragab El-Banna. "Egypt's geographical location in Africa must be reflected by a palpable political and economic presence on the continent. We must realise that it is in the country's strategic interests to strengthen our links with Africa. Egypt's relationship with the continent must reflect its power and open the doors of cooperation with the countries of the African continent which is a natural outgrowth of cementing ties with Africa. We must never lose sight of the importance of the African connection because there are others who are yearning for an opportunity to take advantage of our absence from the African scene," wrote El-Banna. In a touching gesture to a distinguished Africanist, the weekly Rose El-Youssef paid tribute to Mohamed Fayeq who was for years the chief envoy of former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser to Africa. Today, he is the head of the Arab Organisation for Human Rights and a member of the select UN committee on Darfur. In Egypt, as in many other developing countries, people are often honoured only after their death. It is nice to note that for a change, someone of the calibre of Fayeq was honoured while still alive.
