Egypt slams Rice for remarks on constitution changes

She is holding talks with foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. She hopes to mobilise wider Arab support for the stalled effort to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians and to encourage flexibility from Arab nations that have not made peace with Israel.

But her visit coincides with a political storm in Egypt over planned constitutional amendments that the country’s Opposition has denounced as a blow to democracy in this country which is a close US ally.

Rice told reporters before she left Washington on Friday that she was “really concerned” about the referendum. “The Egyptians set certain expectations themselves about what this referendum would achieve and the hope that this would be a process that gave voice to all Egyptians,” Rice said. “I think there’s some danger that that hope is not going to be met.”

Even before Rice’s arrival in Aswan, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said: “It is unimaginable that someone would speak about … an Egyptian internal political process before it even starts.”

Mubarak rebuffs UN’s Sudan request

CAIRO: President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt rebuffed a request on Saturday from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to influence Sudan’s president to drop his objections to United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur. Government and rebel violence in Darfur has left 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. — NYT