Khatami’s debate with Mubarak over democracy

“Hosni Mubarak and Egypt’s Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, Khatami and I sat down to eat breakfast. Mubarak respected and revered Mr. Khatami and constantly praised his personality and his global thoughts,” Seyyed Mohammad Kharrazi, Khatami’s advisor and a member of the board of the directors of the International Center for Dialogue Among Civilizations in Geneva, wrote on the Iranian history website (tarikhirani.ir) about the meeting which took place before Mubarak’s trip to Riyadh to attend the Arab League summit.

In the meeting Mubarak slammed the Americans and the US wrong policies in the region, saying that they were dangerous people, interfere everywhere, create unrest, do not know friend from foe and the only thing they know is their own interest that they want to protect at any cost.

“I told King Abdullah (the Saudi king), because he has a great responsibility, that by these actions, Americans increase the world’s hatred towards themselves. The Americans think the world and the Arab world listen to whatever they say, but they are mistaken. The Americans suffer from false pride, and act arrogantly because of their pride. It is not surprising that they always have problems; that country is not ruled by rationality. Our only concern is that the US current cowboy (George Bush) might take action and then hand over power to democrats after achieving primary success,” Mubarak said.

Khatami, for his part, raised the issue of expanding ties between Iran and the US during the presidency of Bill Clinton and said, “The situation is different. We took good steps but the Americans adopted a dual approach. During my presidency resolving issues with the US and the West was a taboo, but now it is not so. Unfortunately during my time hardliners in Iran and the US were against the normalization of relations.”

Mubarak’s answer was, “This approach endangered them and their interests. The Americans made a mistake in not trusting views such as yours. I told the American officials that the views of the Muslim world are different from theirs. I told [Colin] Powell [the former US secretary of state] that what kind of democracy is this that you talk about? Gaddafi’s democracy is better. He [Powell] constantly made fun of Gaddafi. Gaddafi has a peculiar definition of democracy; demo means people and cracy means chair, so the combination means people should sit on chairs, and well, everyone is sitting on a chair. I had gone to Libya and was in a tent with Gaddafi. There was a commotion. Gaddafi told me to go with him so he could show me democracy in Libya. He talked to people using a microphone and said he wanted to assign prime minister and other ministers, then named someone as the premier or the minister. People applauded and supported him. Gaddafi told me this was a democracy based on people’s vote and their political system was admirable. This was the way of holding election in Libya and the system of democracy in that country. Libya is a law unto itself. Whenever I see Bush I tell him that I would like to see his democracy in Iraq. They want to disturb the Muslim world.”

 Khatami said, “Although the US is not right but democracy is a good thing. Why should not we move towards it based on our own needs and resources as to not give others an excuse to dominate us under the pretext of democracy.

Mubarak said he did not agree and laughingly added, “democracy? What democracy?” he reacted to any kind of democracy.