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Jordan Times 2nd June 2003 Despite official Egyptian red carpet, Bush is 'persona non grata' CAIRO (AFP) ‹ Despite the red carpet treatment he can expect from his Egyptian summit host Hosni Mubarak when he arrives on Monday, US President George W. Bush is ³persona non grata² among a hostile population of 70 million people. Though the Mubarak government here is proud that Bush is making the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh his first stop of his maiden presidential trip to the Middle East, many Egyptians can hardly conceal their hatred of him. Take, for example, a message circulating on the ubiquitous mobile telephones. ³George W. Bush asks a soothsayer to tell him the day he will die, and the soothsayer replies: `You will die on an Arab holiday,² according to the message. ³So Bush asks: which one? The soothsayer's reply: `Any day you die will be a holiday for the Arabs.² Another Egyptian interviewed in the streets of Cairo said, ³I hope the heat kills him² in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, where the temperature hovers around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). Afaf Al Sherbini, an English teacher at a Cairo school, said ³such reactions are typical² of people in a Third World and non-democratic country who ³believe political change can only occur with the leader's death.² But she added that the problem runs deeper. ³Bush was only the catalyst for hatred, a scorn and failure to understand which had been dormant among both the Americans and Arabs, and whose wounds will not heal so quickly,² Sherbini said. ³We asked sixth graders to make a drawing of his visit, and look,² the teacher said. Sherbini points to a drawing where Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are standing over a pile of Iraqi and Palestinian bodies, shaking blood-soaked hands and stretching the other out to the Arabs. The Arabs had long been angry with a United States which has so staunchly supported Israel by systematically vetoing any UN resolutions against it, but the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 proved to be a watershed. Not only did many cheer the television images of the toppling of the World Trade Centre towers in New York city, Egyptians became angry at the subsequent US war against terror. ³The image of Muslims detained at the US base in Guantanamo, chained in cages like animals without trial, shocked the Arab Muslim world,² according to Mohammad Amin Al Masri, a journalist with the government newspaper Al Ahram. ³The images from the stone age proved to even Washington's most loyal allies that the United States was not in a position to teach democracy to anyone,² Masri told AFP. Such resentment grew more bitter with the ³carte-blanche² that the Bush administration gave Sharon to crush the Palestinian uprising and boiled over into hatred when it ordered the invasion of Iraq in March, he added. Fanning the flames were the television images from postwar Iraq. ³Public opinion turned further against Washington, when they saw American troops standing idly amid the looting that followed the fall of Baghdad in April, while they should have ensured security,² Masri said. ³Washington knows perfectly well who the tyrants are in the Arab world, but they continue to court them until they have totally exploited these dictatorships, and it's only then that they decide to destroy them,² he said. In order to ³restore his credibility² before Egyptian public opinion, Masri continued, Bush should achieve ³mission impossible: Create a Palestinian state within the borders of 1948,² he said, referring to the date of the creation of Israel. With the rise in such anti-American hostility, the Egyptian police have taken even stricter security measures to protect Americans and other foreigners. ³If the Americans feel so threatened, let them leave. We don't want them here,² a motorist could be heard shouting to police at barriers blocking roads passing the US embassy in the centre of Cairo. Security is expected to be extremely tight for Tuesday's summit in Sharm El Sheikh. Monday, June 2, 2003 _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk