May 1, 2003

Egypt's workers are the nation's foundation, on which this country has always relied at all stages of its national struggle, President Hosni Mubarak said yesterday in his speech on the eve of May Day celebrations.

    "Labour Day is a time to contemplate past achievements and the challenges that lay ahead," President Mubarak said.

    The contemporary Egyptian renaissance was based on political and economic reform with the aim to achieve freedom, equality and justice, Mubarak said.

    "Our experience has shown that we should not wait for cirumstances to change but work instead to change them now to serve our interests," he said.

    "Political reform means greater diversity of opinion so that we can be guided to the right solution.

    "Economic reform means raising the income of the individual by removing bureaucratic and technical obstacles to investment and opening up opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises, which will help reduce unemployment and increase growth," the President said.

    President Mubarak thanked the nation's workers for supporting economic reform programmes, saying that their approval and active participation through their unions had helped the country avert social strife and national disunity.

    "But despite all the changes and achievements, we still face many challenges, of which the greatest is unemployment," the President said.

    "This would be best tackled through encouraging investment, local and foreign, and expanding exports through efforts to integrate Egypt into the global economy and raising its economic status internationally.

    "New markets must be opened abroad to increase jobs and foreign currency reserves, and the best way to achieve this lies in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and in Arab, African and other regional economic blocs," he said.

    President Mubarak underlined the importance of a single Arab market and the need for Arab economic cooperation to create a truly regional economy to increase the Arab world's economic and political importance in the world.

    Boosting exports involved improving the quality and competitiveness of locally manufactured goods, modernising industry and taking up the latest technology, he said.

    On population growth, President Mubarak said that if this is not brought under control, there would be few resources left for education and social services. "Population growth has had an adverse impact on literacy, making it increasingly difficult for the education system to keep pace with new generations in classrooms.

    "Illiteracy has rendered industrial modernisation impossible, retarded growth and prosperity," he said, expressing hopes that a plan for national literacy campaign would be completed by 2007.

    Concerning the Palestinian issue, President Mubarak said that Israel should realise that if it wants to end the conflict with the Arab world, it must end its occupation of Arab territories.

    He urged the Palestinians to make every effort to fulfil its obligations as outlined in the roadmap plan.

    The President expressed hopes that the international community would now resume helping to resolve the Palestinian issue, now that the formation of the new Palestinian government showed that the Palestinians had so far lived up to their commitments.

    On Iraq, the President rejected the idea of imposing democracy on the country by force, saying that this would not be conducive to the democratisation of the rest of the region.

    "Forcing foreign standards on Iraq would not necessarily bring democracy and reform in the Arab and Islamic world or curb fanaticism," he said, adding that those who thought this way, ignored steps taken by Arab nations to achieve democracy in line with their own standards.

    "A democratic Iraq could pave the way for the establishment of a new Arab system, which would entail the revival of the joint Arab security treaty under the umbrella of the Arab League," the President said.

    President Mubarak also urged for reform of the UN, saying that there is a need for a full review of the international standards to foster greater respect for national sovereignty.