Items of primary concern

Last week President Hosni Mubarak and US President George W Bush hammered out a number of issues vital to their interests and to stability in the Middle East. In an exclusive interview, US Ambassador to Cairo answers Soha Abdelaty's questions
What is his agenda for US Vice- President Dick Cheney's Middle East tour?
This is Vice-President Cheney's first trip as vice-president. He's spending quite a bit of time on this. I think that shows the importance of developments in this region generally, but also of the relationships that we have with our friends in this area.
His agenda is to strengthen these relations, to address the primary items of concern, which I would enumerate as the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli situations in particular; and the cooperation against terrorism, which I would not focus on any single issue or country, but instead include the range of activities that we have underway.
And third, he [came] to Egypt to continue discussions, which started when he met with President Mubarak in Washington.
Let's talk about Iraq. A top- secret policy paper, which was leaked to the Los Angeles Times this week, has many in this region concerned. It outlines the US nuclear strategy, and, among other things, it says that nuclear weapons would be an option in any kind of confrontation with countries like Iraq. Do people here have reason to be concerned?
Let me step back on that question for a second. Our belief is that Iraqis retain a programme of weapons of mass destruction. Because they have not allowed inspectors in the country, there are potential consequences and some real consequences. Potentially, they could have such weapons. In reality, they have imposed on themselves continuing sanctions because they have not brought themselves with these UN rules.
There is now a discussion under way in the United Nations; maybe the Iraqi position will change. I do not know, it is up to them to decide. But the road ahead is very clear. These inspectors should be allowed to do their work.
I would caution you, however; do not believe all these stories you read about specific plans. There's nothing unusual about us reporting to Congress, as we are required to do, our concern of weapons of mass destruction elsewhere. President Bush has all sorts of options to deal with these problems. He has not made any specific decisions on this.
In terms of the report that you mentioned that came out, I am not sure that it was characterised exactly right in the American newspaper in which it emerged.
What would the US do if Iraq allowed the inspectors to return?
They would do their work to verify that Iraq does not have any of those weapons. And if it does, as we think they do, then they should be destroyed. That is the process by which they bring themselves into compliance with the resolutions.
In a perfect world, they comply completely, and then the UN Security Council sits down and discusses what they should do as a result. But unfortunately, you never know with the Iraqis. They send their Foreign Minister to New York, and he declares that they have had a positive exchange and that they will have another meeting in April. But some other figure in the Iraqi government announces the very next day that all these inspections are complete nonsense and that they are not going to do any of this stuff.
We hope that everyone can convince Iraq to do the right thing. These weapons pose a potential threat, not only to our country, but to yours, in this area and elsewhere. In particular, it is enormously alarming to us that terrorists might get their hands on such weapons. After 11 September, that is not a possibility that Americans are comfortable with. We want to do the maximum to avoid that being possible. And we shall.
Egypt has concerns regarding a possible strike against Iraq. How has the US attempted to answer those concerns?
We haven't made any decisions. But I think President Mubarak also said that Egypt believes that Iraq should comply with the UN resolutions. We believe that this is the best avenue to deal with the Iraqi problem.
For our part, we are not convinced that Iraq intends to comply the resolutions. But we are prepared to be surprised, and if Iraqis wish to, they can pick up the offer that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has made to them, which is to come in, and sit down, and start the process of inspections rolling again.
The US Special Envoy Anthony Zinni is to return to the region despite the escalation of violence that we have witnessed over the weekend. Which developments made Washington send him back again?
Our object is to bring down the level of violence. That remains our fundamental intention. In our view, you cannot get into a process that leads to negotiations unless the violence is controlled. We really believe that greater effort can be made to control this situation.
We are sending General Zinni back because things deteriorated so badly. It is no secret that our friends in this area have asked for the United States to pitch in and try to help, including by sending General Zinni back. And that's what President Bush decided.
Egypt wants Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to make progress in the peace process, to get him to meet Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and to lift the siege currently imposed on the Palestinian people. How will the US help to achieve these goals?
Of course there are requests, calls and demands from the Israeli side as well. We see our role as trying to make sure there is progress here. Progress begins with controlling the violence. But it doesn't stop with controlling violence. There has to be a better way forward. This situation is explosive and enormously dangerous to all involved.
We think that there is a tremendous burden on each side to make the maximum contribution to controlling the situation. To the Palestinians, that is going to mean making some decisions, too. You mentioned some of the ones for Israel. We don't disagree. We have ideas for how those things might be done.
But the Palestinian side is going to have to make some decisions as well. Some of those are definitely within Mr Arafat's capacity to do. And I believe that he knows that, and some of our friends in the area are working to convince him in that regard.
Some commentators are noticing a change of tone in the US administration's method of dealing with the Israelis and the Palestinians. They are citing recent criticisms by Secretary of State Colin Powell of Ariel Sharon's actions, amongst other things. What has brought about this change?
We have been pretty consistent on this. We have always called for action on both sides. Sometimes you have noticed us call on what you thought was one side more than the other. Sometimes we do our work in public, sometimes we do our work in private.
We respect the right of Israelis to defend themselves. But we have always said that their actions in the security area should be conducted in a manner that is proportionate to the threat and deal responsibly with the problems they face. We have also said to the Palestinians all along that violence is not an instrument that will get you to the end that you want. And terrorism is denounced by everyone.
Action should be taken to control both. We are not trying to make moral judgments in what we say and do. What we're trying to do is really very simple: control this, stop it if possible and then restore a dialogue that will take us into negotiations. We've even given a vision of what might be the outcome.
Now there is discussion in the Arab world about the outcome as well, about what is the Arab vision of peace with Israel. We would like to hear all sides reiterate those ideas.
What are US expectations of the upcoming Arab summit?
It's very easy, at times like this, to denounce something. It's very easy to be critical. It's a lot harder to adopt a statesmanlike position of vision and authority. There are people listening, there are Palestinians, Israelis, Americans and Europeans who are listening. There are ideas out there that are positive, and reach out to people to re- establish a sense that there is a hope for a fair outcome. That is a good thing.
It is up to the Arab League what they do. But everybody will be watching. As I said, denunciations are easy, positive statements are a lot harder.
The US State Department's Human Rights report came out on 4 March, and it appears to be less critical of human rights issues in Egypt. How do these reports influence Egyptian-American relations?
In the United States, human rights receive special attention in places where there is a long-standing and solid American friendship. That happens to be the case in Egypt. I would also point out that the human rights report on Israel is very closely watched, as is the human rights report on Russia, China and a few other places.
So it's not that anyone is picking on Egypt. What we're trying to do is to write as objective an analysis as we can, so when there is a problem, we try and address it. And ideally we try to work cooperatively to do something about it.
But certainly where there is an improvement, we ought to take notice about it. I think our general observation is that there has been an improvement in the human rights situation in Egypt. In some areas, the concern remains.
What are the guarantees that the re-launched US-Egypt strategic dialogue will be more successful than the previous one?
Because of our friendship with Egypt, we have a dialogue all the time. The issue for both our sides has been how we could focus this on issues that are of primary importance to each of us and institutionalise it in a way to make sure that there is a process that has some continuity.
In the past we have not been so successful in doing so. But each administration has a different approach. This administration has been relatively spare in the number of "strategic dialogues" we have. I think that one of the important results, not the only one, but one of the important results, of President Mubarak's visit, is the announcement that we will have this dialogue. We are deepening its content. It's going to take place on a number of issues of concern: global questions, policy planning, military issues, and economic issues.
We envision this being inaugurated at a ministerial session, that is Secretary Powell on our side and Mr Maher on the Egyptian side. And then the day-to-day conduct of the dialogue will be done by one of our most important officials, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who has a very high reputation and long background in this area.
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