Israel Matzav

Mubarak blows off Obama

There are 'elections' in Egypt on Sunday, but there won't be much opposition and there won't be any election observers - despite a request for observers by President Obama.

The Egyptian government has publicly rejected U.S. demands — and President Obama's personal request — for monitors to observe Sunday's parliamentary elections and for adherence to international standards of transparency and fairness.

President Hosni Mubarak's government instead has overseen a crackdown against his political opposition, arresting at least 1,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, and disqualifying their leaders in many cases from even standing for election.

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The mood from official Cairo was captured in a front-page editorial this week in the state-run and -funded newspaper, Al-Ahram, which often serves as a weather vane for the thinking inside the Mubarak regime.

"America and its experts should know and realize the Egyptian leadership role," al-Ahram's editor, Osama Saraya, said in the editorial. "Egypt has played and plays an important role in matters of regional peace and security … and is capable of bringing regional stability to all the areas that are regressing due to wrong U.S. policies in Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

"The United States is the one that ought to listen to Egypt, and not the other way around, as Egypt is managing its political, economic, and social reforms and maintaining its regional role in maintaining peace and international security … and the Egyptian political regime enjoys both domestic and international credibility."

Dina Guirghis, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, "This statement and tone from official Cairo are both disheartening and alarming because they demonstrate that the Egyptian regime, through its official media mouthpiece, is now comfortable demonstrating strong posturing highlighting the United States' declining influence in the region, including on issues of critical domestic reform."

And you thought that once Barack Obama became President, the US would have great relations with the Muslim world, and that the Muslim countries would do whatever the US asked.

If Obama can't get Mubarak to agree to election monitors, how is he going to get Egypt to give any real support for a 'peace agreement' between the 'Palestinians' and Israel?

Labels: Barack Obama, Egyptian elections, Hosni Mubarak

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:51 AM