Mubarak meets Bill Gates

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt yesterday in Cairo received the founder and board chairman of Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, Bill Gates, who is making his first visit to a country in the Middle East where he is taking part in the regional conference for Microsoft developers which started in Cairo yesterday.

The meeting was attended by the Egyptian minister of telecommunications and informatics Ahmad Nazif, the director of the Middle East company, Ali al-Farmawi, and its director in Egypt, Karim Ramadan.

Following the meeting, Nazif said that Mubarak and Gates discussed cooperation between Microsoft and the Egyptian government in various fields, including the electronic government (e-government), and training and development of human resources and alliances between Microsoft and the Egyptian companies working in the field of information technology.

Gates expressed his company's appreciation for the opportunity given to it to cooperate with the Egyptian government through providing more low-cost computers and cooperation to launch the electronic government, noting that what is taking place in Egypt is considered an example to be followed in the Middle East and the world. He stressed that Egypt owns enough potentials to be a producing country in the field of technology. He indicated that the electronic government which was launched on Saturday with the Egyptian prime minister Atif Obeid will enable citizens to get rid off paper work and waiting lines.