United States First Lady Laura Bush underscored the importance of literacy, especially for young women, while visiting Egypt on Monday for the last leg of a Middle East tour.
”Mrs Bush emphasised the importance of literacy and the role of women, especially young girls, in society,” a US embassy spokesperson in Cairo said.
On arrival, the wife of US President George Bush — who is a librarian by training — immediately went to the presidential palace to pay a courtesy visit to Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The two first ladies went on to record an episode of a television programme for young children, Alam Simsim, which is the Arab equivalent of Sesame Street.
”She and Mrs Mubarak visited the set and then recorded a brief sequence on the importance of reading with Khokhah, a peach little muppet girl,” the spokesperson said.
He said the episode will probably air in the show’s next season.
Only half of Egyptian women are literate, according to government statistics, although women are paradoxically well represented among the country’s doctorate holders.
After lunch at Cairo’s famed Mena House — built around the hunting palace of Khedive Ismail and nearby the grand pyramids of Giza — Laura Bush visited the Abu Sir girls’ school.
She was due to visit the pyramids later on Monday and will spend the night at the US ambassador’s residence, the spokesperson said.
She will meet with embassy staff and members of the US community early on Tuesday before setting off for the Egyptian port city of Alexandria.
”She’ll be off to Alexandria on Tuesday, where she will visit another school and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina,” or Alexandria Library, he added.
Bush will wrap up her two-day visit in Egypt on Tuesday afternoon.
She had arrived on Monday from the Holy Land, where she encountered angry anti-American protests.
Bush said earlier that she had not been surprised when Israelis and Palestinians protested during her visit to Jewish and Muslim holy places in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday.
”I’m not surprised at all. I knew how emotions run in this region. I was warmly welcomed by Palestinians and Israelis,” Bush told reporters in the Arab Israeli village of Abu Ghosh when asked if she was taken aback by the demonstrations.
On Sunday, as she visited the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine, dozens protested on behalf of Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American who was jailed for life in 1987 in the US on charges of spying for Israel.
At the adjacent Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam, a handful of protestors shouted ”Death to America” as she entered the Dome of the Rock. — Sapa-AFP