Word: mubarak
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Muammar Gaddafi is the sworn enemy of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, as the prime suspect. Central to this view is the fact that a Libyan cargo ship, the Ghat, entered the northern end of the canal on July 6, then traveled southward through the canal and the Gulf of Suez to the Ethiopian port of Assab on the Red Sea, where it unloaded its cargo and eventually headed back toward the canal. According to Egyptian officials, that round trip should have taken the Ghat about eight days. In fact, it took 15 days. Long before the Ghat left...
...beginning, Mubarak implied that either Libya or Iran might be responsible. He later added that he hoped it was not Iran. "I think the Libyans were involved," he told reporters early last week. "But until now we are waiting to find one of the mines to confirm our suspicions." Like his predecessor, the late Anwar Sadat, Mubarak has long been at odds with Gaddafi. Sadat once described the Libyan leader as "a vicious criminal, 100% sick and possessed of the demon." Mubarak's style is to be more restrained in his criticism of fellow Arab rulers...
...proving Libya's guilt is something else. Mubarak knew that Egypt's twelve aging minesweepers were not capable of clearing the entire Red Sea, or even the Gulf of Suez, or of finding and identifying unexploded mines. So he turned to the U.S. for help. The Reagan Administration has subsequently been accused by the Soviet Union and some radical Middle Eastern states of using the problem as a way to force more U.S. naval power into the region. The Soviet news agency Novosti declared that Washington was "tempted by the idea of turning the Red Sea into...
...same time, the Administration is eager to support Mubarak in a moment of need and suggested that he call for an international rescue mission. Britain contributed four mine-searching vessels, which have wooden hulls to reduce the risk of setting off magnetic mines. France has sent four minesweepers and two support ships to the region. The U.S. dispatched four Sea Stallion helicopters and a contingent of about 200 men aboard the Shreveport, an amphibious transport vessel that entered the Gulf of Suez at midweek. The Shreveport joined the U.S. oceanographic ship the Harkness, where 15 mine-warfare experts were already...
...plied the waters of the Red Sea on their way to or from the Suez Canal (see map), and there no longer seemed to be any doubt that sabotage was involved. Perplexed by the implicit threat to shipping in the Suez Canal, which his country controls, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appealed to the U.S., Britain and France for help, not only to clear the threatened shipping lanes but to solve the mystery. By week's end American Sea Stallion helicopters and British and French minesweepers were on their way to the trouble zone...