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After long days of deafening silence, the US on Sunday, May 21, finally
faulted its key Mideast alley Egypt for its crackdown on opposition and
pro-reform protests.
"These (actions) strike me as not only wrong actions but mistakes, like
beating people up and the heavy-handed security reaction to these things,"
US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said on the sidelines of the
World Economic Forum (WEF), hosted by the Red Sea resort of Sharm
El-Sheikh, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
But the American diplomat tried to tune down the criticism.
"I think that they conflict with the government's own desires and
interests and where they (government) want Egypt to go," he added.
Over the last two weeks, Egyptian police detained hundreds of
pro-reform protesters who had come out to support two judges facing a
disciplinary hearing for speaking out against rigging last year's
legislative polls.
Over 300 protesters, mainly from the country's largest opposition group
the Muslim Brotherhood, were detained in the latest protests on
Thursday.
According to witnesses and AFP reporters, police with truncheons
encircled clusters of protestors and clubbed them.
Opening the WEF Saturday, May 20, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
claimed that rushing reforms in the region could lead to "chaos."
He linked the reform process to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the
situation in Iraq and the Darfur conflict.
Praise
Zoellick also criticized as a "mistake" the manner in which the
authorities had dealt with jailed opposition leader Ayman Nour.
An Egyptian court turned down on Thursday an appeal by Nour against a
five-year sentence handed out last December for forging affidavits for the
creation of his party in 2004.
The 42-year-old lawyer came a distant second in the 2005 presidential
election in which Mubarak won an overwhelming majority.
The White House condemned the curt ruling on Thursday but failed to
comment on the crackdown on opposition protests, taking place at the same
time.
Zoellick applauded opposition supporters for voicing their discontent
and demonstrating their wish to be part of the political process.
"(beating demonstrators) is certainly not a pretty sight, but it is
also in a way encouraging that you now have the people of Egypt trying to
step forward and say: Look now that there is a more open process we want
to take part in it and we are going to insist on our political rights," he
said.
"It is the direction we would obviously encourage things to go."
Betrayal
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood blasted Premier Ahmed Nazif's
assertion that the government wants to prevent the group, which has 80
seats in parliament, from forming a parliamentary bloc in future
elections.
"It is obvious that the government does not have any real desire or
serious intention towards reform. This is obvious by the way it wants to
silence opposition voices," deputy leader Mohammed Habib told Reuters.
Nazif told Reuters Saturday the government wants to prevent the Muslim
Brotherhood from forming an opposition parliamentary group by winning
seats as independents in future elections.
The group is not allowed to form a political party and thus cannot
officially field candidates in elections because Egypt's constitution
forbids the establishment of religiously-based parties.
Habib said the government would probably use arrests and military
trials to prevent the formation of another Brotherhood-based opposition
bloc inside parliament.
He said the group, which won a fifth of parliament's seats in elections
last year, would attract more support from Egyptians if the government
resorted to repressive measures to keep its members out of parliament.
"If they use repressive methods, and that is what is expected ... then
it will only result in more sympathy and support for them (the
Brotherhood) from the Egyptian people," he said.
The Brotherhood bloc in parliament has called for and been denied --
official enquiries into police beating of demonstrators during recent
protests, and over a conflict between judges and the government over
judicial independence.
"They (government officials) want to suppress the political movement to
set the stage for an idea that is already rejected by the Egyptian people,
that of inheritance," Habib said.
He was referring to a conviction shared by Egypt's analysts and
opposition groups that Mubarak is grooming his son Gamal to take over
after him.
Gamal's fiancée, Khadiga el-Gammal, because the talk of the media after
she made her first appearance at WEF opening.
She sat between Gamal and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit in
the front row.
Key government ministers, including Investments Minister Mahmoud Mohei
El-Dine, sat in the second and third rows.
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