Condoleeza is into human rights big time. Who knew? from Daily Star, Pakistan
Rice puts off plans to visit Egypt next week
Sunday, February 27, 2005
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has put off plans to visit Egypt,
where the jailing of an opposition politician has raised deep US concerns, US officials said on Friday. Rice will go to London for a meeting on Tuesday to promote Palestinian political, security and economic reforms and she had considered going to Egypt afterward, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
Boucher did not give a precise reason for the decision not to visit Egypt although he noted a Group of Eight-Arab League meeting in Cairo originally scheduled for Wednesday had been postponed. That meeting was put off six days ago.
A senior State Department official did not directly link the decision to put off the visit to Nour’s case, saying it was more a question of giving the Egyptians additional time to work on issues of democratic reform. “In the end, we wanted to give the Egyptians some space to get organised on all these things,” he said, alluding both to the issue of democratic reform in the Middle East as well as in Egypt itself. reuters
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_27-2-2005_pg4_10