Nowadays the West is facing a very unpleasant decision concerning support for Middle Eastern and Moslem regimes world wide.  The choice is whether to support a full democratic electoral process knowing radical Islamists will come to power or to back corrupt pro-Western secular rulers who at best allow for partially rigged elections but assure their own continued terms in office.  The most prominent example is Egypt where Hosni Mubarak won the recent contest and parliamentary vote but it is an open secret that the Moslem Brotherhood (despite certain gains) would have polled a much better outcome provided the elections had been totally honest.

It is not everyday that six major European leaders (PM Gordon Brown – Britain, Pres. Sarkozy – France, Chancellor Merkel – Germany, Pres. Berlusconi – Italy, PM Zapatero – Spain and EU President Todolanek of the Czech Rep.) show up for a one day tour in the Middle East including a stop in Sharm el-Sheikh to give support to Egyptian Pres. Hosni MuBarack and his Saudi counterparts and then continuing on for dinner with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert where they accord full backing to Israeli policy.  The uniting factor is to halt Hamas (the Moslem Brotherhood) rearmament and by extension make clear their goal of curtailing extremist Islam and Iran.  Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire at 2AM on Jan. 18 and Hamas followed suit half a day later.  All this coincided with the European diplomatic initiative.  But why so fast?