CODEL WOLF DISCUSSES AYMAN NOUR, RELIGIOUS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 CAIRO 000313 SIPDIS NSC FOR DNSA ABRAMS E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/19/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM KIRF KISL IR SY EG OVIP SUBJECT: CODEL WOLF DISCUSSES AYMAN NOUR, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, UN MATTERS, AND REGIONAL SECURITY WITH PRESIDENT MUBARAK Classified by Ambassador Francis Ricciardone for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) In a January 17 meeting with President Hosni Mubarak, Congressman Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) pressed the GOE on: --finding a solution to the Ayman Nour issue; --supporting and expanding religious freedom; --supporting US positions at the UN, especially with regard to Human Rights Commission reform and the Iranian nuclear question; and --controlling the challenges from Iran and Syria. President Mubarak replied that the Nour issue was in the hands of the "independent Egyptian judiciary." He asserted that no one has done more for Egypt's Christians than he has. The President said that Egyptian public opinion and Egypt's role in the Group of 77 limited its ability to support USG positions in international fora. The President noted that Egypt has played a supportive role on Iraq and on other regional challenges, including Syria. The President also expressed his concerns about the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood. End summary. ¶2. (C) Congressman Frank Wolf met President Mubarak, who was joined by his spokesman Ambassador Soliman Awad, at Ittihadiya Palace for 45 minutes on January 17, immediately after Mubarak's meeting with Vice President Cheney. The Ambassador, Rep. Wolf's Chief of Staff Dan Scandling, and poloff Roger Kenna (notetaker) accompanied the Congressman. -------------- Ayman Nour -------------- ¶3. (C) Congressman Wolf opened the meeting--as he did with interlocutors at the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Interior, Justice, and Trade-Industry, as well as with presidential son Gamal Mubarak--by passing the President copies of the December 29, 2005 masthead editorials about Ayman Nour in the Washington Post and New York Times. Rep. Wolf said that he was speaking to the President as "a friend," "with great respect," and in the belief that "good friends have to be open with each other." Rep. Wolf said that he did not intend to dwell on the particulars of the Nour case, but on the fact that Nour's continued imprisonment--in the eyes of many in Congress--is "an impediment to our relationship." ¶4. (C) Rep. Wolf told Mubarak he felt like he was watching in slow motion as an accident took place involving a friend. Rep. Wolf argued that Nour was "an unknown" for members of Congress until he was arrested in January 2005, but that the GOE's jailing of Nour had raised his profile tremendously, "like (the British jailing of) Gandhi." He urged the President to use his influence to work for Nour's release from prison pending his appeal to Egypt's highest court (the Court of Cassation). Rep. Wolf told Mubarak that he understood that Nour might be eligible for a suspended sentence or to be confined to his home pending his appeal. ¶5. (C) President Mubarak responded that neither house arrest nor probation was an option, and that the entire matter lies with the Egyptian courts. He said that he had personally "helped this man (Nour) a lot. I sympathized with him at the beginning." Mubarak said that he had "prevented" an earlier criminal case against Nour when then-Minister of Information Technology and Communications Nazif (the current PM) had sought to prosecute Nour for a scam involving international telephone services. Mubarak asserted that he had "helped" Nour with his run for president. Mubarak attributed Nour's loss of his parliamentary seat in November 2005 to the animus of the Wafd candidate No'man Goma' who had been humiliated by his distant third-place finish in the presidential contest. Mubarak alluded to the case of an unnamed Mubarak family member who had been prosecuted for unspecified crimes, and said that he had been powerless in the face of the independent Egyptian judiciary to intervene in the case of his family member. Mubarak asserted that Nour's wife, Gameela Ismail, who is a journalist and "is making lots of stories," was responsible for alleging that Nour had been unfairly treated. "You can be sure," said the president, "that we did not interfere one way or the other." -------------- Religious Freedom -------------- ¶6. (C) Rep. Wolf thanked the President for his efforts to preserve and expand religious freedom, and urged him to continue to make progress on this important issue. Regarding the December 2005 presidential decree devolving decisions about Church repair and rebuilding to governorate level decisions, the President noted that he had sought to devolve all decisions to the governorate level, but that Coptic Pope Shenouda III had specifically asked the President to maintain control of the process for granting permits for new church construction. ¶7. (C) In response to Rep. Wolf's questions about the requirement that religious identity (limited to the "three Heavenly religions": Judaism, Christianity, or Islam) appear on national ID cards, the President asserted that it would be "dangerous" to do away with the requirement since it would lead to confusion and the potential for fraud in civil cases which are often decided according to religious (vice civil) laws. -------------- UN Issues -------------- ¶8. (C) Turning to the issue of UN reform, Rep. Wolf pressed the President for GOE support on UN management reform, the new Human Rights Council, and the referral of Iran by the IAEA to the Security Council. The President noted that public opinion, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, prevented the GOE from taking positions in international fora that were at odds with the Group of 77 or that appeared to hold Israel to a different standard. "The Group of 77 is not always right," replied Rep. Wolf. -------------- The Muslim Brotherhood -------------- ¶9. (C) In response to Rep. Wolf's question about the significance of the Muslim Brotherhood, the President said that the MB members of Parliament were the inheritors of a tradition of terror that had tried to kill Nasser, had killed Sadat, and "tried to kill me in Addis Ababa in 1995." Mubarak assured Rep. Wolf that the GOE is watching the MB "very closely," and that intelligence cooperation between the USG and GOE on this subject was very strong. -------------- Iran -------------- ¶10. (C) Turning to Iran, President Mubarak expressed his profound distrust of Iran and its Shi'a religious government. He described Iran as an agent of malign influence in every country in the region with a sizable Shi'a population. -------------- Syria -------------- ¶11. (C) The President reviewed for Rep. Wolf his efforts to secure the cooperation of the Bashar Al-Asad regime with the Mehlis investigation. He also alluded to his counsel to Asad to secure Syria's border with Iraq. Mubarak noted that he believed that promoting the ouster of Asad was misguided since it would spark a return to the situation in Syria in the early 1950s, when "whoever among the military got out of bed first in the morning was able to launch a coup that day." -------------- Soliman Awad on the Margins -------------- ¶12. (C) In a pull-aside with Rep. Wolf after the meeting with the President, Spokesman Soliman Awad reviewed the details of the GOE case against Nour and provided Congressman Wolf with a non-paper of the alleged evidence of Nour's shady past and a copy of a May 2005 Washington Times article making the same claim. Awad also noted that the GOE's efforts to take steps to improve religious freedom, including the contentious matter of religious identity on national ID cards, was constrained by the need to proceed carefully so as not to inflame extremist Islamist opinion against the GOE. Awad argued that the GOE could not provide civil documents to Baha'is, or Muslims who have converted to Christianity, without sparking a backlash from the Islamists. Rep. Wolf told Awad that the USG had not identified a precise solution to the problem but rather hoped that the GOE could devise an Egyptian solution to this obvious problem. ¶14. (U) Rep. Wolf did not have the opportunity to clear this message before his departure. RICCIARDONE