CAIRO, 2 March 2004 — Arab countries came in for strong criticism yesterday in an Egyptian government daily for their rejection of the US reform initiative for the Middle East that Washington aims to launch in June.

“There is nothing (in the plan) which justifies the categoric rejection with which it has been received in the Arab world,” wrote analyst Mohammed Salmawi in Al-Ahram.

He said the plan “neither attacks Islam, nor violates Arab identity or culture, or the characteristics of each Arab state, just as there is no trace of intervention by a foreign party to implement it”.

Salmawi said he had “tried but failed to find anything that could be rejected” in the initiative, which Washington wants to launch at a G-7 meeting in the US state of Georgia of the world’s leading industrialized powers.

“Who could reject freedom or democracy, the struggle against corruption, economic reforms, development of the sciences, reforms in education and strengthening the role of women?” he asked in Al-Ahram.

The analysis was in sharp contrast to the chorus of criticism in the Egyptian press, including Al-Ahram, of the initiative.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last week “forcefully rejected ...already written prescriptions” coming from outside the region to remodel the Middle East in the wake of invasion of Iraq, Al-Ahram reported.

In a briefing with journalists, Mubarak said he believed “reforms are necessary and inevitable, on condition that they come from within and conform to the needs and convictions of the peoples.”

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has since said that he agreed any reform package “can’t be imposed from outside. It has to be accepted from the inside.”

Police Arrest Nine in Besieged Village

Meanwhile, nine suspected Egyptian criminals were arrested yesterday by police who have laid siege for five days straight to a southern village considered a haven for criminals, the Interior Ministry said. Along with the arrests, police seized a half-ton of marijuana and 50 km of opium, the ministry said in a statement.

Witnesses said that hundreds of armed police officers were still in position around Nekheila village Sunday night and that intense gun battles were continuing.

They said the police had regained control of the western part of the Nile village located about 400 km south of Cairo.

Residents of Neikheila, sympathizing with those fighting the police, on Sunday flooded the streets of the village by bursting a major canal to slow the security forces’ advance, witnesses said. They earlier said that fugitives had set fire to 13 homes to block the advance.

With gunfire echoing in the background, one resident, Yassin Hassan, earlier said that as many as 50 to 70 people had been killed during the siege, but police denied there had been any deaths. The police operation began Wednesday after the murder two weeks ago of five people in a feud between two families that has left at least 20 dead over the past several years.

Police have branded the village a haven for drug traffickers and arms dealers and arrested 15 people on Saturday.

At least five officers were injured overnight Thursday in clashes with residents.

Police also said fugitives were holding an unspecified number of people hostage, but Hassan, whose uncle Ezzat Hanafi is the head of the Awlad Hanafi clan alleged to be holding the hostages, denied the charge.

“There are many dead. Between 50 and 70 people have been killed,” Hassan, said, charging that police had fired anti-tank rockets, and adding “there are also many wounded”.