Mubarak rejects foreign pressure to implement democratic reforms

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak yesterday stressed that his country rejects any pressure under the pretext of disseminating democracy.

In a joint press conference with the visiting President of Malta, President Guido De Marco, Mubarak said that democratic practice cannot be completed in one or two years, noting that Egypt has been adopting democracy for many years, even before the revolution.

Mubarak's statements were made in reply to demands recently rumored and disclosed by Saad Eddine Ibrahim, the director of Ibn Khaldoun Center, in which he called for linking American aid provided to Egypt to implementing democratic reforms.

The US President George W. Bush had called in a speech several weeks ago to leading the Arab states on the path of democracy.

Washington had allotted millions of US dollars to what it described encouraging democracy in the Arab states after the collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein in April this year.

Two American legislators debated the idea of supporting the Ibn Khaldoun Center, which is led by the Egyptian activist Saad Eddine Ibrahim in Cairo, in order to enhance the direction towards democracy in Egypt.

The Egyptian papers alleged that the proposed aid will be deducted from the American annual aid given to the Egyptian government, but Ibrahim said that the council of secretaries of Ibn Khaldoun Center decided to refrain from accepting any assets deducted from the aid allocated to Egypt.