CAIRO: Egypt Sunday named its former ambassador to the United Nations, Nabil Al-Arabi, as foreign minister in the latest move to purge the cabinet of members of toppled president Hosni Mubarak's government. Earlier a new interior minister took office pledging to restore public confidence in the police a day after protesters stormed several state security buildings. In an acceptance statement carried by the state MENA news agency, Mansur Al-Issawi said he would take “all necessary measures to restore confidence between citizens and the police.” He also promised to make “every effort in the coming period to restore security and stability in the Egyptian street.” “Nabil Al-Arabi said he has accepted the Foreign Ministry portfolio during this critical time in the history of Egypt,” the state-run MENA news agency reported. Arabi, 75, replaces Ahmed Abul Gheit, who had been in the job since 2004. A respected judge who served at the International Court of Justice in 2001, Arabi said he had already met new Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and discussed “Arab and African affairs.” In a recent article in the independent daily Al-Shorouk, Arabi said he believed Egypt must maintain its peace deal with Israel, which was signed in 1979 and led to Egypt being shunned by the Arab League. But he stressed that Egypt did not have to respect a controversial Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip. The new cabinet also includes a new justice minister. Hundreds of protesters staging a rally outside the Interior Ministry in Cairo, which houses offices of the hated State Security agency, was violently broken up. Protesters have over the past two days rallied outside some dozen state security offices across the nation. In many cases, protesters stormed the buildings, including the main State Security headquarters in Cairo. The protests followed reports that agents were detroying evidence that would incriminate them in possible cases of human rights abuses. On Sunday, army soldiers fired in the air and used stun guns to disperse a crowd that wanted to storm the state security offices inside the Interior Ministry in downtown Cairo. The protesters said they wanted to see for themselves whether the building had secret cells and to stop officers from destroying documents. Meanwhile, the two sons of Mubarak received a hefty commission from Israel to back controversial natural gas exports to the Jewish state, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported Sunday, citing what it said were classified documents. Al-Jarida daily said it obtained the documents, concerning Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, from a special department at the Egyptian Interior Ministry that was looking at the interests of the family of the former president toppled in a popular uprising last month. Based on the documents, the paper said negotiations took place involving Israeli officials, former Egyptian oil minister Sameh Fahmi and Hussein Salem, a businessman close to the Mubarak family, in January 2005. Gamal Mubarak initially demanded a 10 percent commission but eventually agreed to half of that while his elder brother and Salem settled for 2.5 percent each from the $2.5 billion deal signed in May 2005. Al-Jarida published photocopies of the alleged documents. The deal provides for 1.7 billion cubic meters (59 billion cubic feet) of gas annually over 15 years to be sold by Israeli-Egyptian consortium East Mediterranean Gas (EMG) to the Israeli Electric Company (IEC).
