Egypt says it all.....

[adrianh]

Egypt, caught in the grip of raging civil conflict that has already claimed nearly a thousand lives in just four days, yesterday shot down a suggestion that*Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutuintervene to stop the bloodshed, saying it doesn’t need South Africa’s “failed reconciliation process”. The proposal from former*Western Cape*premier and now South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, got short shrift from the Egyptian foreign ministry, which expressed “surprise” at South Africa’s offer to “assist Egypt by sharing experiences and lessons from our own political transition, from apartheid rule to a democratic dispensation”.The proposal was made on Friday, when Rasool and Ebrahim Moosa, professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, wrote in the Washington Post that Tutu and other international figures with “moral authority” should intervene urgently in Egypt. Other suggested members of the group include former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, Tunisia’s Renaissance Party leader Rachid Ghannouchi, former US national security adviser Jim Jones, former Irish president Mary Robinson, and veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi.But the Egyptian foreign ministry said it was surprised South Africa was “trying to export its failed reconciliation process that hasn’t achieved real co-existence”. The statement accused South Africa of having some of the highest rates of crime, corruption, poverty, unemployment and poor health in the world.

http://newswall.co.za/news/latest/po...u/adkgt.229017

[Dave A]

Nothing wrong with Tutu's moral authority IMHO. But it's pretty sad when our government has to keep rolling out our (well and truly) retired icons to try and claim some standing on the subject.

I wonder if they even consulted the Arch before making the offer. Or did they know it would be turned down and the "offer" was essentially rhetorical.
Probably the latter. Our gov is pretty good on rhetoric