Club Med, Sudan and the ICC, secondary school certificate results, and the regrets of Boutros-Ghali dominate the press, write Gamal Nkrumah and Mohamed El-Sayed There was a distinct difference between the preoccupation of the official papers on the one hand and the opposition and independent papers on the other. The onus of the official papers was not surprisingly on official affairs of state. The official papers focussed on the so-called Union for the Mediterranean at the beginning of the week after which attention turned to Sudan and its squabble with the International Criminal Court (ICC). ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's photograph and that of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir were splashed on the front pages of the official papers including Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar and Al-Gomhuriya. "The ICC prosecutor charges Al-Bashir with genocide in Darfur and calls for his detention", ran the front page headline of Al-Ahram. There was a photograph of an obviously peevish President Al-Bashir and a warning from President Hosni Mubarak of the dire consequences of Ocampo's unprecedented move. This, after all, was the first time that a sitting president has been charged with genocide. If the Sudanese president actually goes to The Hague, where the ICC is headquartered, for prosecution, it will set a precedent, and other African and Arab leaders might follow. Al-Ahram also stressed that the Sudanese authorities quite naturally rejected the ICC decision. The paper also showed Mubarak chatting with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon at the Union for the Mediterranean summit in Paris. Independent papers, on the other hand, highlighted domestic concerns. In sharp contrast, Nahdet Masr quoted Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif as defending the record of Egyptian cabinet ministers whom he described as "honourable". Nazif disclosed that the ministers, many of whom were originally businessmen before they entered politics, "actually lost financially because of their political commitments." The Sudanese government's spat with the ICC was relegated to the bottom of the front page and was treated in a radically different fashion. While independent papers noted that the ICC decision was a warning to Arab and African dictators, they also hinted that the entire episode smacked of neo- colonialism and alluded to the mass demonstrations in Sudan in support of the Sudanese president and how protesters chanted "Down with America". Bush, the paper quoted Sudanese source as saying, should be the one to stand trial in The Hague by the ICC for murdering over a million Iraqis. Back to the Club Med, the commentators' opinions varied considerably over the manner in which the Paris summit was covered. The official papers generally applauded the event, while the independent press was more sarcastic in tone. Writing in the daily Al-Masry Al-Yom, Said El-Lawindi, an expert in European issues, argued that "the Euro- Mediterranean equation has not always been in the interest of the Mediterranean Arab countries. The outcome of the Barcelona Process was meagre because of Israeli arrogance and the unstable state of affairs in occupied Palestine." El-Lawindi criticised Arab positions on the newly formed Union for the Mediterranean, arguing that "the Arabs dealt with the French project like a child who is used to his father presenting him new clothes or food. This approach adopted by southern Mediterranean Arab countries makes us mere receivers of [new] ideas. It is a negative attitude that further dwarfs the Arabs, and makes them depend on other nations' efforts and thoughts." On more mundane matters, the tricky question of the thanawiya aama or secondary school certificates continued to preoccupy the pundits. Nahdet Masr came up with a provocative front page headline: "The results are out today", the paper noted, "and the schools of the poor trounced [the privileged schools] at language [tests]". Ironic, the underdogs turned out to be better at linguistic skills. Another concern of the papers was the controversial draft law regulating broadcast media which was disclosed this week and which triggered wide-scale controversy in media and human rights circles. In an interview with the weekly opposition Al-Arabi, Minister of Information Anas El-Fiqi was quoted as saying: "The law will not be enforced before being debated with political parties, civil society and media companies." Writing in the daily Al-Alam Al-Yom, critic and poet Farouk Goweida criticised the releasing of an Iranian film The Execution of a Pharaoh about the former Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat. "The movie comes at the wrong time as Iran is fighting one of its most important and successful political battles with the West. There have been many attempts to restore normal ties between Egypt and Iran... and [former] Iranian president Mohamed Khatami's visit to Egypt ushered in a new era in relations between the two countries... However, there are some people who always want to spoil the [restoring] of these relations." Goweida added, "It seems that the hardliners who are anti-Egypt have the upper hand in Iran." Even though the focus was on Iran, the commentators had an eye on Egypt's own nuclear ambitions. Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed El-Baradei was quoted in Al-Masry Al-Yom as saying: "Egypt does not have the necessary cadres or the laws in place to build nuclear plants." Egypt is still pondering the best sites to build its first nuclear reactor, despite the fact that it announced a couple of years ago it would start its peaceful nuclear programme quickly. The nuclear question preoccupied pundits, especially as it is today inextricably intertwined with the prickly question of the unprecedented hike in fuel prices and energy shortages. There was no shortage of philosophical questions, though. In an attempt to dig for the reasons behind the Islamic world's backwardness, Ragab El-Banna argued in a series of articles in Al-Ahram that, "men of religion and religious institutions share the responsibility for the Muslims' backwardness either by promoting ideas and religious edicts that contradict reason and science, or by spreading myths and superstitions that isolate the Islamic world from modern civilisation." In yet another outburst of self-defacing introspection and retrospection, the former United Nations secretary-general expressed his regret at heading the world organisation. Al-Masry Al-Yom in characteristic fashion quoted Boutros Boutros-Ghali as saying: "I regret accepting the UN's secretary-general job. And, though I was elected to this position to renew and rejuvenate the organisation, I was bitterly disappointed in the end. I soon discovered that the United States controlled the administration of the UN." He added, "I left the UN because I didn't back many US positions, especially those regarding the Palestinian cause." The veteran diplomat conceded that Pax-Americana was too much of a bitter pill to swallow.
