Brussels, 21/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - Catherine Ashton left for Cairo on Monday evening, 21 February, hoping to be the first high-ranking Western representative to visit the Egyptian government after the fall of Hosni Mubarak on 11 February, but the EU high representative arrived to find that she had been upstaged by the British prime minister, David Cameron, who was making a surprise visit to Cairo on Monday. The political director of the US state department, William Burns, also arrived in Cairo on Monday for talks with the new Egyptian leaders. Leaving Brussels, Ashton told reporters that she was planning to offer EU aid to Egypt to help prepare elections and reform the country's constitution, build institutions and allow social and economic development. The EU was offering aid but would “not dictate reforms or impose solutions. It's in the hand of the Egyptians”, she added.
Freezing Mubarak's assets. The news emerged on Monday that Egypt has made an official request for the foreign assets of Mubarak and his immediate family to be frozen, in other words his wife Suzanne and two sons, Alaa and Gamal, and his sons' wives, Heidi Rasekh and Khadiga al-Gammal. The EU27 is prepared to do so in theory (although the conclusions document published after the Council of Ministers' meeting on Monday made no mention of it) but the legal details of the decision still need to be fine-tuned before the assets can actually be frozen. (H.B./transl.fl)