Dina Ezzat wonders how the visit by George Bush to Egypt can help Cairo and Washington manage their differences and maintain what they used to dub a strategic partnership "So why is he coming now? Are they going to strike Iran?" wondered Hussein, a Cairo taxi driver. The "he" in Hussein's question referred to US President George W Bush. As for the "they", Hussein was reluctant to offer a straight answer. For him, however, it was not a strict reference to the Americans because one way or the other it also involves a hidden mention of America's regional allies: Israel and "others". Heading towards his 60th birthday, the grey- haired taxi driver, of Palestinian origin, spends over 10 hours on the road every day during which he listens to a lot of radio news, mostly from the Arabic service of BBC. But Hussein, who demonstrates considerable knowledge of regional and world political developments, says he is not sure of the real motives behind Bush's visit to the Middle East this week. He does not "really believe" that the current US administration has enough time to launch a new war on Iran even if it wanted to. He also "knows" that Bush is not coming to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. "Only a fool would believe that there will be a Palestinian state this year. It's only a joke," he said. As for Iraq, Hussein thinks that Bush "is no longer interested since he is leaving" the White House anyway. "We will see," Hussein concluded. Bush arrived yesterday in Israel on the first leg of his Middle East trip expected to last for nine days and to also include the Palestinian territories. It is Bush's first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since he took office seven years ago. Other stops in the US presidential visit include Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt where he is expected to hold talks with President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm El-Sheikh on 16 January before he heads back home, may be after a short stopover in Iraq. Egyptian and other Arab officials qualify the visit as "important". They argue that it is an opportunity for the US president to demonstrate commitment to keep up the pace that he induced last November in the Middle East process upon hosting the Annapolis meeting. They also argue that the visit is an opportunity for Arab leaders to offer Bush their direct accounts of the role that the US needs to play during the remaining months of Bush's term in office to help promote peace and stability in a region that many an Arab capital blame Bush and neo-cons for its increased instability. For Egyptian and other Arab commentators the visit is about one of two things: either to promote further isolation of Iran, since many seem to think that a US military attack on Iran is getting increasingly unlikely, if not totally excluded, or to attempt to keep up the momentum of the Palestinian-Israeli talks in order to secure some sort of a final status agreement, or a framework thereof. According to press interviews accorded this week by the US president to Arab and Israeli TV channels, the purpose of the visit is a combination of all of the above -- somehow. The number one objective seems to be for Bush to remind the world that the Iranian regime is "a danger" for which "the US always maintains the military option". Another objective is for Bush, who ignored the Arab-Israeli file for the larger part of his two terms in office, to "define a [Palestinian] state... [without] forcing the issue because of [his] timetable" and to call on Arab countries, especially in the rich Gulf states, to offer "strong support" for the Palestinians and Israelis through their direct negotiations for peace. Bush would also use his visit in the Middle East to remind Syria that it must reconsider its rules of engagement on Lebanon if it wishes to escape ultimate regional and international isolation, and to press upon his Arab allies to extricate Iraq from its current chaos and to try to improve their observation of the rules of democracy provided they keep all Hamas-like political Islamist forces in line. While in Egypt, officials say, Bush is expected to deliberate with Mubarak on all of the above. To judge by the accounts offered by official sources, in Egypt the US president will find many points of agreement and some obvious points of disagreement. Cairo shares Bush's concern about any potential access of Tehran to nuclear weapons but does not believe military action is the answer. In the words of one official, Cairo has repeatedly told members of the US administration and Congress that the mere threat of war against Iran prompts widespread anger in most Arab public quarters. Cairo is also expecting the US to be sensitive enough -- one official argued "tactful" -- to stop bashing Iran over its peaceful nuclear programme in view of the inevitable comparisons that public opinion draws between the case of Iran and that of Israel which is known to possess uninspected military nuclear facilities. One Egyptian official said Cairo would appreciate a clear explanation by the US president on his country's real stance on Iran "because Washington has been sending confusing signals on this matter". It is on the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict that Bush is likely to hear some serious remarks from his Egyptian interlocutors. Press statements made by Egyptian Ambassador to Washington Nabil Fahmi indicate that President Mubarak will press his guest into securing a firm Israeli commitment to halt all acts of colonisation in the occupied Palestinian territories. Egypt, diplomats say, is genuinely concerned about the chances of a serious negotiations process to be pursued in light of the Annapolis meeting if the US maintains the current low level of direct engagement and refrains, as one source put it, "from using its influence with its Israeli friends when this influence could be of use." According to one senior Egyptian official, President Mubarak is expected to tell Bush that while the Palestinian Authority acts to contain militant activities, the Israeli government needs to put a serious check on settlement activities that seems to have picked up "almost aggressively" since the Annapolis conference. "Otherwise [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] will suffer serious image problems among his own people and Arab leaders supporting the Annapolis process. He will not be feeling very comfortable," the official said. He added that "despite its limited expectations of Annapolis right from the beginning, the failure of the process created by Annapolis is the last thing Egypt would like to see." According to Ezzeddine Choukri-Fischere, director of the Arab-Israeli Peace Project of the International Crisis Group (ICG), pressing Washington to exercise more direct engagement in the administration of the Palestinian-Israeli talks, "which should evolve into serious negotiations [soon]", is very important. While arguing it was "too early to argue that Annapolis is about to collapse" as some observers suggest, Choukri-Fischere argued that the next few months are crucial for the process produced by the Annapolis meeting to either succeed or fail. If it fails, he added, it would not be the end of the peace process but it would be very unfortunate for all those who invested time and effort in the process "because then everybody would have to wait for a new US administration to come into office [next year], examine the issue, select the envoys and take the decisions." "[Bush's] visit is a sign of his interest... It increases the stakes for him to succeed," said Choukri-Fischere. However, Choukri-Fischere does not underestimate "the disturbing signs" that have been unfolding in the region since the end of the "Annapolis euphoria". The continued "settlements expansion", the lack of US monitoring of the commitment of Palestinians and Israelis to honour the roadmap obligations, the lack "so far of serious final status negotiations" despite Palestinian-Israeli meetings and the failure to engage Hamas and to improve the situation in Gaza are for him serious problems that have to be addressed soon -- may be even during Bush's visit. "This is a moment of a decisive approach rather than the [so far dominant] lingering attitude... This is the moment to restart the engines," he said. Egyptian officials say they are more than willing to cooperate with the US to give the Annapolis process a good push but they are not in any position to force the US to do what it takes to succeed. They add that even if they know Bush will exit the White House without going as far as defining, much less establishing a Palestinian state, they are still willing to work hard to secure progress on this front. "Whatever is achieved by this [US] administration will be there for any incoming administration to build on, whether it is an administration of Republicans or Democrats," argued one Egyptian diplomat who asked for anonymity. According to the diplomat an Egyptian- US engagement in promoting Palestinian-Israeli, and "may be even later overall Arab-Israeli" peace, is not just a matter of regional priority for Egypt but also an asset for the promotion of bilateral relations that have suffered much "friction" during the Bush tenure. "The sort of crisis we have had with Egyptian-American relations started partly when Bush decided at the beginning of his term in office that making war on Iraq rather than Arab-Israeli peace was his priority... The war was something that Egypt was not supportive of and the peace that Egypt could have helped achieve was put on the shelf," he said. Other Egyptian diplomats and officials who work closely on Egyptian-American relations do not underestimate other points of differences especially in relation to pace and scope of promoting civil liberties and political freedoms in Egypt. "But as you see with the failure of the US war on Iraq and the success of Hamas in the parliamentary elections, the US is no longer talking much about promoting democracy in the Middle East," the diplomat said. He added that the recent decision by Congress to freeze $100 million of the annual $1.3 billion of US military aid to Egypt was essentially prompted by the intensive protests by the Israeli lobby in Washington over what they allege is Egypt's failure to do enough to prevent arms and money smuggling from northern Sinai to Gaza. "That problem [of smuggling arms through tunnels from Egypt to Gaza] has not been solved and has not been fixed," US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said during a briefing he held in Washington earlier this month on Bush's upcoming trip. According to Hadley, "this subject is not just an Israeli problem, but I would say it is [a problem for] all the countries of the region." He said that even the Palestinian Authority is concerned. And, he added, "the Egyptians need to be concerned about this problem." Egyptian officials acknowledge that Cairo has been very keen to demonstrate to concerned members of the US administration and Congress that despite the Israeli allegations, Egyptian authorities are sparing no effort in keeping a close check on the borders. This week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Egypt and the US will be working closer on this issue. Rice, who's accompanying Bush on his Middle East trip, indicated, in not so many words, that a serious development on the borders could force the US administration to use its prerogative to wave the freeze imposed by Congress on the $100 million of military aid. Following talks with President Mubarak in Sharm El-Sheikh on Sunday, Steve Israel, a member of the US Senate Committee on Appropriations -- which basically decided on the $100 million freeze -- said Egypt agreed to work with US trainers and to spend some $23 million of US military aid on technical equipment to find the tunnels that Israel says are built to allow for arms smuggling. Following earlier talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit on Saturday, Israel said that despite the disagreement over the management of the Egyptian-Israeli borders, for the US the relationship with both Egypt as well as with Israel is "critically" important for the promotion of peace and stability in the region. Egyptian officials say they do not expect the issue of the military financial freeze to be "very present" on the agenda of the Mubarak-Bush talks next Wednesday in Sharm El-Sheikh. However, they argue that they expect the overall issue of US economic and military aid to Egypt and the Egyptian proposals presented to Washington last summer for amendments to be approached during the Egyptian-American summit. The Bush-Mubarak meeting next week will be the first in five years. The last meeting between the two presidents was during Mubarak's last visit to the US in 2004. The visit ended on a rather unfortunate note when Bush issued visiting former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon guarantees for the continued presence of large blocks of Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories. The incident led to the collapse of the little chemistry the two leaders had originally enjoyed and prompted Mubarak to break a previous tradition of annual US visits. The absence of direct presidential level engagement was harmful, sources on both sides acknowledge, for the promotion of bilateral Egyptian-American relations. "But now is not the time to look back and lament the failures of the past," commented an Egyptian diplomat. "Now is rather the time to manage the differences and to keep this bilateral relationship in the best shape possible so as to make sure that when a new administration comes into office it will not be confronted with a too fractioned relationship." He added that promoting cooperation on as many regional files as possible could help the best interests of this bilateral relationship. "We might not exactly agree on Iran but we have some points of agreement in relation to the developments in Lebanon and Sudan and in the support of the Arab-Israeli peace process and the stabilisation of Iraq." According to this and other diplomats, Egypt needs to ignore some anti-Egypt bashing in some political and media quarters in the US. However, also according to Egyptian diplomats, the US administration needs to stop patronising Egypt over its political reforms programme.
