No Rice for Egypt
Condi and George standing with a dissident.
NYT Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday abruptly called off a planned trip to several Middle Eastern countries that had been scheduled for next week, a decision that came apparently because of the arrest of a leading Egyptian opposition politician last month———The immediate trigger for the tensions was the arrest on Jan. 28 of Ayman Nour, a member of Egypt’s largely powerless Parliament and head of an opposition party called Al Ghad, or Tomorrow. When Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit visited Washington last week, Ms. Rice made her displeasure clear, officials said. After the meeting, Mr. Gheit protested that Mr. Nour’s arrest was an internal Egyptian matter, and Suleiman Awad, the spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak, said he rejected “any foreign interference in Egypt’s internal affairs.”
