Fathi Sorour's visit to America this week had a wide ranging agenda, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Speaker of the People's Assembly Fathi Sorour was in Washington this week to discuss a wide range of political and economic issues with US officials, with democracy and political reform in Egypt topping the agenda of his talks. Sorour was accompanied by a parliamentary delegation representing all parliamentary forces, with the exception of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The delegation included Mahmoud Abaza, leader of the liberal-oriented Wafd Party; Mohamed Shaaban, the sole representative of the leftist Tagammu Party; Sherif Omar, chairman of the Health Committee, and Mustafa El-Feki, chairman of the assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee and the person in charge of the two-year US-Egyptian parliamentary exchange programme. The delegation also included three businessmen members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP): Ahmed Ezz, chairman of the Budget Committee, Mohamed Abul-Enein, chairman of the Industry Committee and Tarek Talaat Mustafa, chairman of the Housing Committee. Mohamed Kamal, NDP secretary for Indoctrination Affairs and spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak's younger son Gamal, was the only Shura Council member included in the delegation. Before leaving, Sorour said his visit was at the invitation of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives. His itinerary included a meeting with US Vice-President Dick Cheney scheduled for Wednesday, and a lecture delivered to George Washington University's Eliot College for International Affairs. A press conference has been scheduled at the Washington Press Club under the title Egyptian-American Relations: Challenges and Opportunities, and Sorour's programme also involves meetings with Arab and Jewish organisations in an attempt to promote a message of peace. Meetings with Cheney, Pelosi and other US officials suggest Sorour's visit is more significant than a simple parliamentary exchange. El-Feki told Al-Ahram Weekly that one aim of the visit was to partly fill the vacuum left since President Hosni Mubarak stopped his annual trips to the US in 2004. "Since President Mubarak has been unable to visit the US, senior Egyptian officials have regularly made the trip," said El-Feki, alluding to Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif's meeting with President George Bush in 2005 and Gamal Mubarak's visit to the White House in 2006. Sorour's visit, added El-Feki, comes at a time when Egyptian-American relations are suffering some strain. First, he said, came the US Congress decision to withhold $100 million of the $1.3 billion in military assistance that the US offers Egypt, making payment of the sum conditional on Cairo achieving measurable progress in restoring the rule of law, boosting democracy and cooperating with the government of Israel to bring the border between Egypt and Gaza under more effective control. A recent study, Egypt in Congress 2008, emphasised that the Congress decision set a serious precedent, "and it should surprise no one if further attempts to restrict, condition, and even impose cuts on the programme" follow. To make things worse, added El-Feki, Margaret Scobey, a candidate for the post of US ambassador to Egypt, described the Egyptian government's record on human rights as "weak" during her Senate hearing session of 6 February and said that serious abuses remain rife. Scobey cited the case of jailed political activist Ayman Nour, and attempts to refer sociologist Saadeddin Ibrahim to a military tribunal, as examples of the restrictions imposed on political freedom. The two-year-old Egyptian-American parliamentary exchange programme he heads, says El-Feki, aims to promote friendly relations between Egypt and the US and open direct channels of communication between parliamentarians in both countries. "The programme has organised trips to Egypt for US Congress members and staff and now it is our turn to send Egyptian parliamentarians to the US." The exchange programme, he points out, was created on the eve of the decision to withhold $200 million from US military assistance to Egypt, a sum later reduced by the Senate to $100 million. "The programme has already allowed US Congresspeople to discuss issues of democracy and human rights with Egyptian officials in Cairo and visit the borders with Gaza," said El-Feki. On the sidelines of his meetings in Washington on Monday Sorour stressed that while the Egyptian people were grateful for US economic and military aid they could not accept that such assistance be accompanied by attempts to meddle in Egypt's internal affairs. "Please remember," said Sorour, "that when it was first mooted US assistance aimed to boost economic development and raise the military capacity of Egypt to assist it in becoming a force for peace in the region." Sorour argued that Egypt's critics in Washington get their information from opposition forces willing to do everything in their power to tarnish the image of their country. "I urge you to scrutinise the information provided to you about Egypt," he said. "America has itself faced sharp criticism in recent years for gross human rights violations in Guantanamo Bay and in the Abu Ghraib prison... People living in glass houses should not throw stones." The government, Sorour continued, is doing its best to its human rights record, and while "there might be some individual abuses the state is keen to contain them." Human rights have also been a thorn in the side of relations between the People's Assembly and European Parliament (EP). Sorour met last week with EP Speaker Hans Pottering who refused to apologise for an EP resolution condemning Egypt's human rights record last January. On the issue of the Gaza border, Sorour denied claims that Egypt is somehow involved in smuggling weapons via underground tunnels. "Egypt fully respects its peace treaty with Israel. Smuggling has been a long-term problem that we are doing our best to contain."
