Mubarak’s Slow, Steady Diplomatic Pace Finally Paying Off

At first, they called him “Colonel Cow Eyes,” testimony to his years as an air force bomber pilot and the droopy brown eyes that made him look forever on the edge of sleep.

Hosni Mubarak, one old joke went, had gone riding with his chauffeur a day after assuming the Egyptian presidency and came to a fork in the road.

“Which way would Nasser go?” Mubarak supposedly inquired.

“He always went to the left,” the driver replied.

“And Sadat?”

“To the right.”

“Very well,” Mubarak replied decisively. “Signal left, signal right, and park.”

After three decades of charismatic leadership that had thrust Egypt to the forefront of world diplomacy, first under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s vision for a united Arab world, then Anwar Sadat’s historic peace initiative that led to the Camp David accords, Egypt after Mubarak assumed the presidency in 1981 settled onto an uncertain road of chilly peace with Israel and isolation from its Arab neighbors.

Faced with conflict, Mubarak forged a course squarely down the middle. When Palestinians launched an uprising to press their demand for a homeland, he quietly advocated a dialogue with the United States.

When Iraq went to war with Iran, Mubarak, ignoring outraged advisers who complained that Iraq had refused to resume diplomatic relations with Egypt after Camp David, quietly shipped arms to aid the Arab cause.

Other advisers say they urged Mubarak to respond to the anti-Egypt propaganda campaign being waged by the rest of the Arab world. He refused.

Now, suddenly, Mubarak is in the midst of an unprecedented diplomatic offensive, championing a drive to sponsor direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Cairo, flying to African capitals to mediate ethnic and border disputes and pressing the case of Third World economic troubles at European summits.

Last month, he discussed his Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative at the U.N. General Assembly, and he discussed the same subject with President Bush last Monday.

8 Years of Patience

This is not, a number of diplomats and analysts say, a new Hosni Mubarak. This is the old Hosni Mubarak finally paying off. This, said one, is the product of eight years of patience and steadiness and incremental diplomacy: “He has always said, ‘I am the man of the middle of the road.’ Now we see that all the roads led into his office.”

Sadat, said another, had the vision that led Egypt into what remains the only Arab peace treaty with Israel, “but it was Mubarak who toughed it out.”

The Arab League’s historic decision this year to open its arms again to Egypt was only the beginning of a period of hyperactive diplomacy for Mubarak and Egypt’s massive foreign service corps.

In July, Mubarak was elected chairman of the 50-member Organization of African Unity, touching off a round of initiatives in which he has sought to organize a direct confrontation on the problem of Third World debt, arguing that rich countries have as much to lose as debtor nations in the event of an international economic crisis.

Almost immediately after taking over the OAU, he convened a mini-summit in Harare, Zimbabwe, to devise a strategy for ethnic peace in southern Africa. Next, he convened a three-day international debt seminar in Cairo. Then, it was off to the Nonaligned Movement summit in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he again called for an international dialogue to help resolve the problem of Third World debt.

On the way home, he stopped off in Mauritania and Senegal, delivering a proposal for resolving a long-simmering border dispute, and dispatched similar offers of help to Ethiopia and Sudan.

Last month, the presidential palace was the site of one press briefing after another as dignitaries from Israel, Sweden and the Palestine Liberation Organization flew in for talks on Mubarak’s 10-point proposal for guiding discussions on elections in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

None of this diplomatic frenzy has borne fruit yet.

But some analysts say it appears to signal a return to Egypt’s historic role as a leader and mediator in the Arab world. Egyptians, both in government and on street corners, have always talked about Egypt’s “role” in the Middle East, back through 7,000 years of history. One Western diplomat said an Israeli once explained to him that Egypt’s view of that role has to do with the Arabic word that is used: dur .

‘A God-Given Burden’

“He claims the word can’t be translated in English,” the diplomat explained, “but it can be translated in Hebrew. It has a connotation of a God-given burden that must be borne.”

Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, a well-known political scientist at Cairo University, said Egypt under Mubarak has also come to learn that its influence on the world stage depends to a large extent on its influence in the Arab world.

Other Middle East analysts say Mubarak’s diplomatic efforts have all been tinged with a substantial dose of self-interest.

For example, Egypt has been weathering the unpleasant effects of its peace treaty with Israel for a decade and now realizes that there will be no abiding peace until the Palestinian issue is resolved.

While Egyptians have a great deal to gain through the peace process, said one senior Western analyst, “the down side is they have more to lose now if things don’t go well.”

Also, Egypt has more to gain than diplomatic kudos from better Arab relations. The newly opened border with Libya is likely to mean a major new job market for Egyptians, and Egyptian ministers are already working to capitalize on friendly relations with the oil-rich gulf states by luring new investments into Egypt.

In Ethiopia and Sudan, Egypt sees not only the dream of African harmony, but perhaps more important, the sources from which flow Egypt’s lifeline, the Nile. “As a result, the kind of thing Egyptians really, really don’t like to see is Arabs and Africans squabbling,” one diplomat said.

The upshot is that Mubarak, head of a nation that was historically the guidepost of the Arab world, is likely to find himself as OAU chairman championing the cause of the majority of his constituents in the organization: black non-Muslims.

But the burly, plain-spoken president can probably carry it off, if anyone can, most Western diplomats agree.

If anything, Egypt’s domestic problems are worse under Mubarak, but he has convinced much of the Egyptian public that he is doing as much as anyone could to resolve them, some analysts said.

“Nasser and Sadat both tried to have cults of personalities,” Dessouki said. Their faces were on posters everywhere. Popular songs about them were played on the radio. “Now, for example, we don’t have a single song on Mubarak,” he said.

“He is low-profile, cautious, calculative, doesn’t take great risks, incremental, adaptive, a moderator. But he is a man of the people, period. When he moves and talks, he is your cousin, your brother.”