As elections draw closer Culture Minister Farouk Hosni remains confident that he will be UNESCO's next director-general, writes Nevine El-Aref At his last meeting with intellectuals before heading for Paris to prepare for his UNESCO election campaign, Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said he was optimistic of winning the 18 September election for the post of UNESCO director- general. He noted that he had been so busy preparing for his election campaign that he had not produced a single painting in the last four months. "Despite all the obstacles my candidacy is facing I am still the front-runner," said Hosni. "UNESCO is a formidable international platform for exploring channels for dialogue and rapprochement. We are the antithesis of racism and in the heart of tolerance." UNESCO's Executive Board meets mid- September to appraise the nine candidates nominated for the post: Ina Marèiulionyt� from Lithuania, Mohamed Bedjaoui from Algeria, Irina Gueoguieva Bokova from Bulgaria, Sospeter Mwijarubi Muhongo from Tanzania, Alexander Vladimirovich Yakovenko from the Russian Federation, Ivonne Juez de A. Baki from Ecuador, Benita Ferrero Waldner from Austria, Nouréini Tidjani Serpos from Benin and Farouk Hosni from Egypt. Candidates will each present a brief document outlining their vision for the future of UNESCO as well as being interviewed by the board which will then recommend a candidate to the October meeting of UNESCO's General Conference. It is the conference that elects new director-general who takes office in November. Hosni remains the favourite despite the controversy surrounding his candidacy. On 24 August the Washington-based magazine Foreign Policy published an article by Raymond Stock, author of a forthcoming biography of Naguib Mahfouz, under the title "Very, Very Lost in Translation". Stock roundly condemns Hosni's candidacy and describes him as representing the extreme anti-Israeli position of Egypt's intelligentsia. "The Hosni brouhaha is just the most recent demonstration of the extreme paranoia against Jews that exists in Egypt," writes Stock, differentiating between the Egyptian intelligentsia and the average Egyptian who, he says, is less prone to hardline anti-Israeli sentiment. Stock asserts that "Hosni's opinions about Israeli culture are par for the course among Egypt's intelligentsia, for whom 30 years of official peace with the Jewish state, the longest of any Arab country, have done virtually nothing to moderate its rampant Judeophobia." To support this claim the author notes that "Egyptian cultural figures and academics are professionally barred from contacts with Israelis. Even the faculty senate at the American University in Cairo passed a resolution urging a boycott of Israeli scholars and schools". The article mentioned comments made by Hosni last year in the People's Assembly. When asked by an MP about the presence of Israeli books in Egyptian libraries, Hosni responded by saying that he would burn such books if any were found. The statement attracted international criticism and was the subject of a harsh editorial in the French newspaper Le Monde. Hosni responded in Le Monde with an apology, saying he regreted his comments uttered in the heat of the moment. "Nothing is more distant to me than racism, the negation of others or the desire to hurt Jewish culture or any other culture," he wrote. He continued that his words should be placed in the context of Palestinian suffering, and added: "I am a man of peace and I know that peace comes through understanding and respect." Hosni's apology triggered the anger of some Egyptian and foreign intellectuals who accused him of flirtation with Israel in an attempt to secure the post. Stock also mentioned that during his last visit to Paris he announced that Egypt's National Centre for Translation (NCT) would publish Arabic translations of novels by the Israeli writers David Grossman and Amos Oz. The statement sparked controversy at home and abroad with few commentators believing its timing was a coincidence. Gaber Asfour, chairman of the NCT, denies any link between the announcement and Hosni's UNESCO campaign. He points out that the NCT has published five translations from Hebrew since it was founded 10 years ago. The announcement, he said, was simply a continuation of existing policy. Stock also wrote that "in July, the longtime management of the Atelier du Caire, the main gathering place for the city's artists and writers, fell to a coup mounted by a group of disgruntled members; the charge was incompetence and catering to Israelis. And Egypt's greatest modern writer, the late Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, was nearly expelled in 2001 from the Egyptian Writers' Union simply because many of his books had been published in Israel." Egyptian intellectuals and writers have condemned Stock's article and questioned the purpose behind publishing it, especially since it was written in Cairo. Mohamed Salmawy, head of the Egyptian and Arab Writers' Union, describes Stock's article as an attack on all Egyptian intellectuals opposed to cultural normalisation with Israel. Salmawy also denied Stock's claim that the Egyptian Writers' Union had considered cancelling Mahfouz's membership. "These are false allegations by Stock," asserted Salmawy. "Mahfouz was one of the union's founders and its honorary president." Writer Salah Eissa describes Stock's article as "trivial", accusing the American of preferring lies over facts, and concluding that the kindest gloss that can be put on his motives is that they are "naive". He asserts that in the article Stock aims for sensation rather than searching for objective and concrete information. Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly that Hosni needs to campaign abroad rather than at home. Hawass said that the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the failure to achieve peace with the Arab world, makes it difficult to promote cultural exchange with Israel for Hosni just as much as other intellectuals in Egypt. He added that the Ministry of Culture had paid for the translation of Jewish books, for the restoration of synagogues and supports the preservation of monuments. It also promoted a performance by Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim at the Cairo Opera House. "Hosni is not anti-Jewish, he is liberal, and an international artist," says Hawass.
