Former Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa told Asharq Al-Awsat that the first ten years of the current century were disastrous in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak had aged and lost interest in governing the country.
Mubarak and Hereditary Rule
Asked about Mubarak’s ties with former Presidents Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Moussa said: “Mubarak believed that what Anwar Sadat had done was right. And he used to love Abdel Nasser a lot.”
Asharq Al-Awsat asked him if the end of Mubarak’s term was painful. Moussa replied: “Yes of course. He wasn’t as bad as pictured. This man was a patriot and knew what he was doing. He wasn’t at all naïve.”
“The issue that his son could become his heir was not accepted by anyone ... Mubarak did not want for his son to rule Egypt, which is not an easy task. It’s a huge and very complicated country, and the presidency requires a lot of experience,” Moussa said.
Mubarak Loved Elegance and Joking
Was Mubarak interested in his personal elegance? Moussa replied: "Yes. He knew what to wear with what, and he valued elegance greatly.”
“He also had a way of looking at people, and he was often right about that.”
"He was Egyptian par excellence. He loved sarcasm and listening to jokes. He would laugh very energetically and loudly when something amused him, surrounded by a group of humorous people. And then, suddenly, the president would return,” said Moussa.
"He used to wake up early and sit in a pleasant little kiosk in the garden, reading the newspapers and the reports sent to him by various agencies, taking his time. After finishing, he would be fully briefed on many different matters."
Policymaker
Moussa had sometimes implied that he was a policymaker, not just an executor of policies. “First of all, the Foreign Minister must be one of the policy makers ... If he is merely an executor, then he will have no role in the history of diplomacy or in politics, nor will he have the influence that a Foreign Minister is supposed to have like taking initiative, thinking, and acting quickly,” said Moussa.
“This, in my opinion, was the case. However, I cannot claim that I was one of the makers of Egyptian policy. But I certainly contributed to many political steps and political thinking. For example, what were the priorities? A priority was to make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. This was the work of Egyptian diplomacy, which I headed, and I was committed to this issue.”
Advice to Assad on Lebanon Pullout
Asked if Mubarak had advised Syrian President Bashar Assad to withdraw his forces from Lebanon after the assassination of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Moussa said: "I don’t know, I was Arab League Secretary General back then. I advised.”
But Moussa said that when he went to Beirut to offer his condolences to the Hariri family, he visited Damascus to meet with Assad. “I asked him if he was ready to withdraw the Syrian army. He said: Yes,” according to Moussa, who also said Assad clearly stated that the Arab League chief can officially announce the Syrian stance to the media.
Yet, as soon as he returned to Cairo, the Syrian government spokesman denied Moussa’s claim that Assad had promised a pullout of Syrian forces from Lebanon. The regime later retracted his statement.
Asked about the reasons for Hariri’s assassination, Moussa said that the former prime minister was “bigger than Lebanon. He was a huge Arab personality that could have met the president of the United States and of France anytime he wanted.”
Moussa confirmed that Hariri had complained to him about Syria’s relationship with him.
