By Xinhua
Cairo : As U.S. President George W. Bush’s Mideast tour entered its second day on Thursday, an Egyptian expert and media highlighted their suspicion over whether the tour is a real chance for peace.
Mohamed Ibrahim Shaker, Vice Chairman of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, was quoted by the official MENA news agency as saying on Thursday that he did not expect much from Bush’s current tour.
He suggested applying a kind of “wait and see” attitude to the outcome of Bush’s meeting with regional leaders.
Before the end of his second term in January 2009, Bush is trying to push forward matters in the region and breathe life into the stalled peace process, especially in the wake of the Annapolis conference held in the United States late November, Shaker said.
The U.S. president’s visit was meant to express Washington’s mounting concern over Iran, he noted, adding that Bush would try to know Arab leaders’ stands towards Iran and whether the United States would form allies in the region in its row with Tehran.
The expert also held that Bush is expected to discuss with the regional leaders means for the United States to get out of the mire in Iraq.
In an editorial dubbed “Bush tour, is it a real chance for peace,” Egypt’s largest Arabic newspaper Al Ahram said that it was difficult to deny the role of the United States in achieving peace in the region, as well as the role played by Bush himself in pushing forward the peace efforts.
The editorial termed Bush’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories as a historical one, which would give a strong push to the peace negotiations in the Middle East as well as efforts to reach a peaceful settlement to the chronic Israeli-Palestinian issue.
However, the newspaper admitted that doubts remain on whether Bush can succeed in activating peace efforts in the Middle East while the U.S. presidential elections are in progress.
Snother leading Egyptian newspaper Al-Akhbar also issued an editorial on Thursday that the main and real goal of Bush’s Mideast tour is to garner support against what he called “Iranian danger.”
Titled “Bush tour…between pushing forward peace and containing Iran,” the editorial said that the current talks about moving ahead the peace process is just a facade to hide the real goal of Bush’s tour which is drumming up support from countries in the region, especially Gulf ones, to take escalating steps and policies against Iranian danger.
It also asserted that all countries in the region see that Israel poses a real danger as it is the only country in the region that possesses nuclear arsenal and is carrying on with occupation policies and aggression with frank support from its U.S. ally.
The editorial believes that Bush’s visit should be pinned with limited hopes due to the current procrastination policy adopted by Israel that made the Palestinian and the Israeli sides unable to agree on forming follow-up committees on the final-status issues in one and a half months since Washington hosted a international conference on Mideast peace in Annapolis.
Meanwhile, the Al-Gomhuria daily criticized that Bush turned a blind eye to U.S. reservations to leave some space for moves with the Arab world on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and went ahead with supporting Israel till the end.
After his visit to Israel on Wednesday and talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Thursday, Bush said he expected that Israel and the Palestinians would reach a final peace treaty in 2008.
Bush is currently on an eight-day regional tour, which will also take him to Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the only country on the course he has visited before.