Egyptian president starts tomorrow a European tour
Egypt-European Union, Politics, 3/3/2004

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt starts tomorrow a tour to cover Italy, France, and Britain in order to feel the impulse of the three capitals on the position of the European Union concerning the American initiative to reform the Greater Middle East.

Mubarak was among the first to oppose this project which he criticized as being within inapplicable " ready- made prescriptions " imposed from the outside to push the Arab states into the route of democracy and economic openness.

Mubarak will, in particular meet with the Italian prime minister, the French President and the British prime minister. This tour, however, comes three weeks before the forthcoming Arab summit to be held in Tunisia and one month before the visit Mubarak will hold to Washington in the mid of April to open " a strategic dialogue with the US."

The tour does not include Germany, Egypt's remarkable partner in Europe, after the German foreign minister Yushka Fischer discussed a reform initiative for the Arab states competing with the American initiative. The German partners considered the initiative which was debated on February 7 in Munich as "a purely German plan" with whom it is discussed, according to diplomatic sources. The US will debate its initiative on the Greater Middle East in June during the G-8 summit which will include the major industrial states.

The Arab press published an unofficial text for this reform plan which concentrates on democracy and the status of woman, improving education and economic openness. Diplomatic sources in Cairo said that "the beginning of a dialogue" on this text was launched between the US and Europe. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have led the protest movement against the American initiative.

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