WikiLeaks: IsraHell’s secret hotline to the man tipped to replace Mubarak
Last week a friend called me from Cairo. He was, during the first five
years of our friendship, a happy young man working to get his medical degree,
full of hopes for his future. Politics? He spurned them so our conversations
never got too far in that direction. Now, degree completed, the laughter is
gone from his voice. Work is almost impossible to find, money is becoming
useless, there is no fuel, Egypt has, he says, fallen apart from the seams. The
people are still enslaved and it is getting worse. The revolution, he says, is
very very far from completion.
April 8, 2012.
The new vice-president of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is a
long-standing favourite of IsraHell’s who spoke daily to the Tel Aviv
government via a secret “hotline” to Cairo, leaked documents disclose.
Omar Suleiman, left, was Israel’s preferred candidate to replace
President Mubarak according to secret cables released to The Daily Telegraph by
WikiLeaks
Mr Suleiman, who is
widely tipped to take over from Hosni Mubarak as president, was named as Israel’s preferred
candidate for the job after discussions with American officials in 2008.
As a key figure working
for Middle
East peace, he once suggested that Israeli troops would be
“welcome” to invade Egypt to
stop weapons being smuggled to Hamas terrorists in neighbouring Gaza.
The details, which
emerged in secret
files obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to The Daily Telegraph, come
after Mr Suleiman began talks with opposition groups on the future for Egypt’s
government.
On Saturday, Mr Suleiman
won the backing of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, to lead the
“transition” to democracy after two weeks of demonstrations calling for
President Mubarak to resign.
David Cameron, the Prime
Minister, spoke to Mr Suleiman yesterday and urged him to take “bold and
credible steps” to show the world that Egypt is embarking on an “irreversible,
urgent and real” transition.
Leaked cables from
American embassies in Cairo and Tel Aviv disclose the close co-operation
between Mr Suleiman and the US and Israeli governments as well as diplomats’
intense interest in likely successors to the aging President Mubarak, 83.
The documents highlight
the delicate position which the Egyptian government seeks to maintain in Middle
East politics, as a leading Arab nation with a strong relationship with the US
and Israel. By 2008, Mr Suleiman, who was head of the foreign intelligence
service, had become Israel’s main point of contact in the Egyptian government.
David Hacham, a senior
adviser from the Israeli Ministry of Defence, told the American embassy in Tel
Aviv that a delegation led by Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak had been
impressed by Mr Suleiman, whose name is spelled “Soliman” in some cables.
ED: The approval of Barak is a death knell for any hope for the Egyptian people. And Mrs. Clinton? Run from the man as fast as you can!
But Mr Hacham was
“shocked” by President Mubarak’s “aged appearance and slurred speech”.
The cable, from August
2008, said: “Hacham was full of praise for Soliman, however, and noted that a
‘hot line’ set up between the MOD and Egyptian General Intelligence Service is
now in daily use.
“Hacham noted that the
Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim President if
Mubarak dies or is incapacitated.” The Tel Aviv diplomats added: “We defer to
Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no
question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.”
Elsewhere the documents
disclose that Mr Suleiman was stung by Israeli criticism of Egypt’s inability
to stop arms smugglers transporting weapons to Palestinian militants in Gaza.
At one point he suggested that Israel send troops into the Egyptian border
region of Philadelphi to “stop the smuggling”.
“In their moments of
greatest frustration, [Egyptian Defence Minister] Tantawi and Soliman each have
claimed that the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] would be ‘welcome’ to re-invade
Philadelphi, if the IDF thought that would stop the smuggling,” the cable said.
The files suggest that Mr
Suleiman wanted Hamas “isolated”, and thought Gaza should “go hungry but not
starve”.
“We have a short time to
reach peace,” he told US diplomats. “We need to wake up in the morning with no
news of terrorism, no explosions, and no news of more deaths.”
Yesterday, Hosni Mubarak’s
control of Egypt’s state media, a vital lynchpin of his 30-year presidency,
started to slip as the country’s largest-circulation newspaper declared its
support for the uprising.
Hoping to sap the
momentum from street protests demanding his overthrow, the president has
instructed his deputy to launch potentially protracted negotiations with
secular and Islamist opposition parties. The talks continued for a second day
yesterday without yielding a significant breakthrough.
But Mr Mubarak was dealt
a significant setback as the state-controlled Al-Ahram, Egypt’s
second oldest newspaper and one of the most famous publications in the Middle
East, abandoned its long-standing slavish support for the regime.
In a front-page leading
article, the newspaper hailed the “nobility” of the “revolution” and demanded
the government embark on irreversible constitutional and legislative changes.
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