Arab League chief Amr Moussa warned of "more terrorism" if the chaos in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict persist. "The Arab world is ready to make a new start, but this is impossible while Iraq is living in chaos without a Government, and the situation in Palestine is unstable. These are the keys to stability in the region," Moussa told an Arab economic conference in Beirut. He warned that without a strong state in Iraq and an end to provocations against Arabs in Palestine, there would be only more terrorism, hatred and hopelessness. Since the invasion of Iraq, the Arab world is passing an unprecedented difficult period and facing "new political and economic challenge linked to the presence of the [US] superpower.

The war in Iraq shifted the public's attention away from some of the ruling National Democratic Party's (NDP's) internal troubles (including a slew of recent high-profile corruption scandals), forcing the party to deal with the public's negative reaction to the NDP's unpopular "blame Iraq" stance instead. Now that the war is over, the NDP will have to deal with a new corruption scandal, a new opposition alliance, and some of its own problematic parliamentarians.

A series of legal appeals contesting the legitimacy of NDP MPs who have not fulfilled their military service duties may be the party's most serious concern at the moment. The 22 to 30 deputies involved are awaiting a Constitutional Court verdict - requested by parliamentary Speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour via Justice Minister Farouk Seif El-Nasr - regarding whether or not MPs who turned 30 without having done their military service are entitled to run for Parliament

Although the Court seemed ready to issue a verdict earlier this month, further discussions delayed the decision until next month. Informed sources fear that the disqualification of such a large number of deputies would provide grounds for calls to dissolve the current Parliament altogether.

Aware of the delicacy of the situation, NDP MPs recently rallied behind a bill enabling citizens over the age of 35 who had not done their military service to be elected, provided they have paid the fees stipulated by the Government as a penalty for not doing so. Emad El-Galada, an NDP MP with strong business connections to Iraq's defunct Ba'ath regime, submitted the bill, which the parliamentary Proposals and Complaints Committee was set to pass before Sorour intervened to block it at the last moment, arguing that the bill could be passed "while the issue is being discussed by the Constitutional Court."

Another bill, submitted by independent MP Mohamed Khalil Qiwita, sheds light on another NDP parliamentary problem - the controversy over deputies who ran as independents in elections and joined political parties after they were elected. According to Qiwita's bill, the NDP only actually won 38 per cent of the 444 seats contested in the 2000 parliamentary elections. "Later," Qiwita told Al-Ahram Weekly, "the NDP coerced as many as 216 of the independent candidates who had won into joining the party in order to expand its total parliamentary membership to 388, and thus attain a hefty majority." This majority, much to Qiwita's dismay, was able, in this case, to relegate his proposed bill to the parliamentary dustbin.

According to Qiwita, the bill aimed at eliminating one of "the undemocratic practices that the NDP must renounce." In fact, Qiwita's bill is just one of many ongoing initiatives aimed to democratize Egyptian politics. One such high-profile initiative took place on 8 May, when the leaders of four opposition parties - No'man Gomaa of the liberal Wafd, Ibrahim Shukri of the Islamist-oriented Labour, Khaled Mohieddin of the leftist Tagammu, and the Arab Nasserists' Diaaeddin Dawoud - met to discuss the creation of a national front for political reform. The four leaders said they aim to hold a general meeting in mid-June in order to issue an urgent call for more democracy to President Hosni Mubarak. Dawoud said details of the hoped-for alliance are still being worked out, but that its primary intention was to exert pressure on the NDP to end its monopolization of political life. The NDP did not seem too worried about the potential alliance, however. The party's Secretary-General, Safwat El-Sherif, commented: "The NDP stands for civil liberties, political democracy, and dialogue with opposition forces. But we do not like the idea of 'alliances' because we are all in the same boat." The opposition parties, meanwhile, seem to be banking on hopes that next month's meeting will attract a great deal of foreign media coverage, thus revealing the sad state of democracy in Egypt, and causing more pressure on the NDP.

Meanwhile, the NDP has its own internal debate over democratization - between the party's old guard on the one hand (led by El-Sherif and Kamal El-Shazli, the NDP's assistant secretary-general, the chief whip and the secretary for organization and membership affairs) and the party's new generation, led by Gamal Mubarak, the chairman of the influential Policy Secretariat and the 40-year-old son of President Hosni Mubarak, on the other. After the poor NDP showing in the 2000 elections, President Mubarak laid the blame for the party's selection of inappropriate candidates and chairmen of its provincial and district offices on crony relationships.

There has been much talk within the party about making a serious attempt to reform and democratize the NDP ahead of its ninth congress next September. Meanwhile, the old guard's crony relationships - and the corruption scandals they often seem to spawn - continue to plague the party. Last week, Tarek El-Siwaissi, chairman of the NDP's El-Haram (Pyramids) office in the Giza governorate, was remanded into custody for 15 days pending investigation on charges that he amassed a huge fortune -- estimated at LE3 billion - by smuggling Pharaonic antiquities to Europe and America over the past two years. The public seemed less surprised by the charges against El-Siwaissi than by the fact that he is known to be a close associate of El-Shazli, who is also minister for parliamentary affairs.

El-Siwaissi allegedly facilitated hefty bribes to a few high-ranking NDP figures to ensure his selection as chairman of the NDP office in Egypt's primary antiquities area, where he would have easy access to antiquities officials who would help him conduct his illicit smuggling. Six antiquities officials -- four of whom are on the run -- were also implicated in the scandal. The El-Siwaissi case comes at a rather critical moment for the party - after a series of corruption cases involving several other leading NDP figures. One example was the 6-month-long bank fraud trial involving Abdallah Tayel and Abdel-Wahab Qouta, both NDP business tycoons who were, respectively, chairman and deputy chairman of the parliamentary Economic Committee, as well as close associates of El-Shazli. Considered Egypt's most prominent old guard politician, El-Shazli, managed to survive the changing of regimes and platforms over the past 35 years by adapting to new political realities. He is no stranger to opposition criticism of his allegedly crony relationships with NDP businessmen.