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Project Director Gordon Robison's writings on the media and public diplomacy issues in the Middle East.

EGYPT’S PUBLIC DIPLOMACY TEST FOR WASHINGTON
FEB 11, 2005 - 11:33AM PDT
AMMAN, JORDAN
by Gordon Robison

America’s public diplomacy problems in the Middle East can be summed up in a single word: credibility. Over two generations we have acquired a well-deserved reputation for saying one thing and doing another. We preach the virtues of democracy while supporting tyrants. We proclaim our openness and freedom even as we make the US an ever-more-difficult place to visit (and don’t kid yourself – getting a US visa was a slow and often humiliating process before 9-11, in the three years since it has only gotten worse). Washington has long portrayed itself as an honest broker in Arab-Israeli peace talks, but as the recent memoirs of long-time Mideast envoy Dennis Ross show Washington usually cleared American proposals and ideas with the Israelis in private before ‘presenting’ those ideas to ‘both’ sides. That revelation surprised some in the US. In the Arab world it merely confirmed what most people had long suspected. In Egypt today the Bush administration faces a crucial test of its public diplomacy skills and, hence, its own credibility: after all the talk over the last month about supporting freedom and standing up to tyrants, will the United States do anything serious to help Ayman Nur? Nur is an opposition member of Egypt’s parliament. In recent weeks the government has blocked his attempts to form a new political party, prevented the party from publishing a weekly newspaper, stripped Nur of his parliamentary immunity and arrested him on trumped up charges of forgery and corruption. Nur’s sins include questioning President Hosni Mubarak’s policies, calling for the direct election of Egypt’s president (currently parliament – dominated by Mubarak’s party – ‘picks’ a single candidate who is then submitted to the public for a yes/no referendum in which the ‘yes’ vote invariably draws 95+ percent) and openly questioning the president’s efforts to pass his office on to his son Gamal. There have been demonstrations in support of Nur in Cairo, despite emergency laws making such protests difficult and dangerous. The case is getting significant media coverage around the region though little internationally (the best place to follow it in English is Al-Jazeera’s website: english.aljazeera.net). And where, in all this, is the Bush administration, the self-declared foe of tyranny and friend of democracy activists? State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in Washington last week that a dialogue between Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party and opposition parties is scheduled to take place later this year, adding “we find this arrest at this moment incongruous with proceeding with that dialogue.” In fairness, the United States is not completely absent on this one. This evening US-funded Radio Sawa devoted a good chunk of its evening news and current affairs program to a report on the case including interviews with several opposition-leaning Egyptian analysts. That’s a good start, but it is far, far from adequate. Egypt is one of the largest recipients of American foreign aide. It is a key military ally. It plays an important role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. All of this…... FULL TEXT

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