What is Egypt up to in Lebanon? Dina Ezzat looks for an answer The situation in Lebanon is stable but not beyond relapse and Iranian influence over internal Lebanese affairs should be carefully balanced else it could trigger a new round of civil tension. This is the message that Egyptian officials are giving in response to questions on a sequence of visits by Lebanese politicians to Cairo and the time and attention accorded them by President Hosni Mubarak. This week, Mubarak met with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. The meeting came two days after a reportedly extensive telephone call with parliament majority leader Saad Al-Hariri and only a week following a meeting with controversial Christian leader Samir Geagea who is known for a precarious history of lethal fanaticism and conspicuous associations with Israel. For Egyptian officials, the blurred political history of Geagea is part of the sad history of the Lebanese Civil War. It is the future of Lebanon that Egypt is interested in. To prevent a new round of internal civil tension (armed or verbal), Egypt believes that it has to counter the Syria-supported Iranian influence extended to the Shia-dominated opposition headed by Hizbullah in alliance with Maronite Christian leader Michel Aoun. Sources tell Al-Ahram Weekly that Geagea's request for a meeting with Mubarak during his visit to Egypt (on the invitation of the Egyptian Embassy in Beirut) was only confirmed at the last minute when Aoun arrived to Tehran. It is not political vengeance against Tehran, which is publicly accused by Cairo of inciting instability in the Arab world, but political balancing that prompted the decision to accord Geagea a meeting with the president. Egypt's increasing attention to Lebanon started in August when Mubarak received Lebanese Sunni figure Omar Karami, who is associated with opposition and who pleaded for Egyptian support for Lebanon's unsteady civil peace. It was followed by an unplanned visit of Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit to Beirut where he met with representatives of all Lebanese political factions, majority and opposition, but excluded an encounter with Hizbullah's influential leader Hassan Nasrallah. In official press statements and in talks with political figures of the opposition in Lebanon, Egyptian officials and diplomats try to play down the impression -- much emphasised by statements of visiting Lebanese majority figures -- that Egypt is seeking to give the majority government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora a new boost ahead of the countdown to legislative elections due in spring 2009. Egyptian officials are not hiding their political sympathy with the Lebanese majority, which wishes to keep Lebanon away from any political or military confrontation with Israel. Leaders of the opposition, especially Hizbullah, deem such confrontation unavoidable as long as Israel is occupying Lebanese territories and threatening the security of Lebanon. Nor are Egyptian officials shy about expressing their unease, shared with other regional powers, especially Riyadh, over Iran's influence in internal Lebanese affairs. Egyptian and Cairo-based Saudi diplomats argue that if Syria and Iran are holding extensive meetings with their allies in Lebanon to prepare for legislative elections, it is the right of other political powers to play a balancing game. As such, following his meeting with Mubarak Monday, Jumblatt said he received Egypt's support for the demands of the majority to get Syria to acknowledge in writing that the Shebaa Farms area, taken and occupied by Israel from Syrian troops during the 1967 war, is Lebanese territory, "to allow for the Israeli handover of the farms to the UNIFIL (pending a peace agreement with Lebanon) or to Lebanon". Like Geagea last week, Jumblatt spoke confidently of Egyptian support to "Lebanon's full sovereignty" -- a typical euphemism for the elimination of Syrian and Iranian support to the Lebanese opposition in its defiance of Israel. In its pursuit of exercising a certain presence on the Lebanese political scene (in harmony with the marked presence of like- minded Saudi Arabia), Egypt does not seem to be planning to bolster the Sunni community per se in a country sensitive to its ethnic composition. It is rather trying to confront Iran's rising political influence, as it has recently been doing in Iraq. Last week, Egypt's mufti visited Lebanon for the inauguration of a mosque and for talks with Sunni and Shia leaders, including prominent Shia clergyman Hassan Fadlallah. Iranian diplomats speaking privately to the Weekly suggested that Tehran is keen to improve relations with Cairo and that it wishes to "discuss all issues" related to Lebanon or Iraq with Egypt. However, they concurred that it is very difficult for the two capitals to agree on a unified agenda of interests in view of the contrasting political agendas that each capital adopts, especially on relations with the US. Still, neither Egypt, a close ally of the US and a member of the US-Arab anti-Iranian influence mechanism known as 6+3+1, nor Iran, which is playing a tough diplomatic game with the US, are interested in mutual confrontation.
