At the same time the Mubarak Regime is showing growing signs of confusion and desperation.. For years the Egyptian intelligentsia remained silent as the Egyptian State used near barbaric means of ruthless suppression and torture against nationalists of Islamic orientation. A police state of fear and lawlessness has come to characterize the underpinnings of the regime. Now far milder but nevertheless severe repression has come to a prominent member of their own circles -- Saad Eddin Ibrahim -- and the message is clear to all that anyone who speaks up and opposes the regime should fear for the knock at the door. As the New York Times article below suggests but does not say the Egyptian Secret Police and the Nazi Storm Trooers of yesteryear have very much in common -- and not just because S.S.I. is reminiscent of S.S.

WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- Questions about Egypt's efforts to acquire advanced missile technology from North Korea are likely to make the coming visit of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher el-Sayed's to Washington an awkward one, administration officials and intelligence sources said Monday.

Despite denials from Egyptian officials, including President Hosni Mubarak himself, the latest U.S. intelligence reports suggest Egypt is close to obtaining the technology for the No Dong class missiles from North Korea, rockets with a range of 800 miles -- far greater than the best Scuds in the Egyptian arsenal, which can travel at most 300 miles.

A growing chorus of U.S. administration officials and lawmakers has privately raised concerns about Egypt renewing military ties with North Korea, and the sources said the Bush administration is likely to press Maher al-Sayed on this issue.

One U.S. intelligence official says recent reports estimate there are between 50 to 300 North Korean technicians on the ground in Egypt already working on the missile program. The source tells United Press International the Egyptians will have "wide exposure" to North Korean technology as a result of the program.

Another U.S. intelligence official tells UPI, "Egypt is pretty much going to get what Iran got" from the North Koreans. In Dec. 1993, Iran and North Korea signed an agreement to build a production line capacity for the No Dong inside Iran, though that missile had only been tested in 1993 and deployments were much later.

In an interview Friday, Egypt's ambassador in Washington dismissed the allegations his country was trying to attain the missile technology. "The allegations that we are developing a joint project with the North Koreans are false," Nabil Fahmy told UPI.

"We are denying the No Dong program." But other Washington analysts suspect things are different. Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh Burke Chair for Strategic Assessment at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, said he has reason to believe the Egyptians are pursuing some joint military projects with the North Korea. "The missile I think they have been working on with North Korea is along the lines of the Scud class with a range of about 500 kilometers (310 miles). But I've seen reports of more ambitious projects."

North Korea has missile arrangements with Iran, Libya and Syria -- three states the U.S. considers sponsors of terrorism. But Egypt is regarded as one of the leading American allies in the Arab world, and receives U.S. military aid approaching $1.3 billion a year.

The issue of Cairo's interest in North Korea's missile program has surfaced in Washington just when the Bush administration has signaled its intention of resuming bi-lateral contacts with Pyongyang that had been suspended in January when President Bush took office.

Bush had stated publicly that the North Korean leadership could not be trusted as an interlocutor. But earlier this month, the administration announced that it was prepared to resume talks on a broad range of issues including troop reduction in the demarcation zone separating the two Koreas, and halting Pyongyang's missile development. The North Koreans also agreed to a resumption of talks.

Last Wednesday, Jack Pritchard, the U.S. envoy to the Korean peace talks met with the North Korea ambassador to the U.N., Li Hyong Chol, to discuss the modalities of further talks.

Egypt's military relationship with North Korea goes back to the early 70s, when Pyongyang sent an air battalion to Egypt as a sign of solidarity in its war with Israel in 1973.

But the relationship intensified after then-President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1978 -- angering Egypt's Soviet patrons. North Korea stepped in to fill the gap by providing Egypt with much needed spare parts. Egypt's military museum in Cairo is alleged to have been designed by North Korean architects.

The latest unclassified CIA report to Congress on the acquisition missile technology says, "Egypt continues its effort to develop and produce ballistic missiles with the assistance of North Korea. This activity is part of a long-running program of ballistic missile cooperation between these two countries."

Ambassador Fahmy, however, dismisses the rather broad characterization, but confirms that there were such contacts five years ago. "The unclassified report talks about stuff from five years ago, it was a limited program and that's where it stopped," he says.

Still, Congress and the administration clearly need to be reassured. Congressional sources tell UPI that when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited Congress in March he told an informal group of House and Senate lawmakers that Egypt was trying to acquire advanced Scud class missiles from North Korea.

Richard Murphy, former U.S. Middle East negotiator and senior Middle East Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations warned "Not all intelligence reports are true." But he added, "if these reports are true, it could not provide Israel with a better excuse to use its own highy effective Jerico medium range missies."

One House staff member told UPI, "Given the concerns about North Korea's activities in the proliferation of ballistic missiles and the fact that theater missile defense was designed to counter that threat -- something like this does not help Egypt's image."

Indeed, Egypt's new foreign minister will be arriving in Washington Wednesday when questions are being raised about the size of the $1.3 billion annual U.S. military assistance package for Cairo.

In budget hearings in May, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., then the chairman of the Senate panel charged with appropriating the foreign aid budget questioned Secretary of State Colin Powell on the size of the U.S. contribution to Egypt's military.

Powell countered that he thought it to be a sound investment. Other groups too, including Israel's powerful lobby in Washington, have privately begun expressing similar reservations questions about military aid to Egypt, according to several Congressional staff members. The military assistance package goes mainly for modernizing conventional forces liked armored and air divisions -- but not towards developing ballistic missiles.

A partly bald and bearded man of medium height and build, and an outspoken proponent of his views, he ensconced himself on the sofa and began to read. He may have fallen asleep, or simply been deep in thought; he can't quite recall. Whichever it was, he gradually became aware of a persistent drumlike pounding on his front door. Sleepily, he made his way down to the entrance foyer, opened the door and was abruptly jolted completely awake. A dozen armed guards from State Security Investigation, or S.S.I., stormed into the house, as 40 or so others cordoned it off. Some raided his study and eventually carted off scores of boxes of files and books, his computer - and the family safe. Others surrounded him. "Come with us," one of them said. "Come with us. You're under arrest."

"I looked out of the door," Saad Eddin said a few weeks ago, as we sat in the open-air cafe of my Cairo hotel one late April afternoon. "It was like the siege of Stalingrad. Armored cars surrounded the house. Guards were posted everywhere. Why had so many people come to arrest one harmless intellectual? Why didn't they just make a phone call? I would have come."

It was a little before midnight when Saad Eddin Ibrahim was bundled into an armored car and driven about three miles, high above Cairo, into the Mokattam Hills to the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies. Established by Saad Eddin 12 years before - and named for the great medieval Islamic scholar - the center had emerged as a leading exponent of democratic reform and intellectual freedom in the Arab world.

As the armored car continued to climb the sinuous mountain road, Saad Eddin glanced out of the window. "I could see the whole motorcade," he said. "There were at least 10 cars ahead of me and another 10 behind: bright lights in the darkness. There are so many layers, so many conflicting images, in all of this, and it was that night that I first saw the contrast, the physical part - two starkly different images, one romantic, one harsh. Caravans in the desert, I thought, as I looked at the twinkling lights, or the carts of death, during the French Revolution, taking their victims to the guillotine."

It was June 30, the last day of the fiscal year, and Nadia Abdel Nour, the financial manager of the Ibn Khaldun Center, had worked late that night supervising the closing of the books. A genteel, attractive woman of 50 or so, with luminous dark eyes, she is a Sudanese refugee and the sole support of her large refugee family. At around 8 p.m., as she waited at a nearby bus stop, her neatly ordered world began to fall apart.

"They grabbed me from behind, blindfolded me, threw a bag over my head," she later said. She had no idea who they were. She was terrified. "I thought I was being kidnapped!" she said with a shudder.

"When we arrived at Ibn Khaldun, I found her there," Saad Eddin said. "She was outside the center. She was sobbing and shaking. She was still blindfolded. She had no idea where she was, or why."

As Saad Eddin and Nadia Abdel Nour watched in bewilderment, dozens of S.S.I. officers began tearing the Ibn Khaldun Center apart. Others surrounded the building, blocking all access roads. Still others took up positions around it, their automatic assault weapons drawn. Many of their faces were partly concealed by visored helmets, and it was impossible to know who they were.

All across Cairo that evening, lawyers and economists, students and social workers were arrested and taken off to high-security prisons. By the following week, 28 officials and employees of the Ibn Khaldun Center, along with representatives of the League of Egyptian Women Voters, had been swept up. Most remained in prison for two months. During that time, not one of them - not even Saad Eddin Ibrahim - was charged. They were held under Egypt's draconian emergency laws, which President Hosni Mubarak has renewed every three years for the 20 years of his presidency.

It was nearly dawn when Saad Eddin Ibrahim and his 20-car security escort were ushered through the gates of S.S.I. headquarters -- where he was held through the following night. For 14 hours, Saad Eddin was interrogated about his work, his public lectures and his dozen or so books. Interrogators came and went from the windowless spartan room. Some were from the office of the public prosecutor, others from S.S.I. After that ordeal, he was transferred to the high-security section of the Tora prison complex in South Cairo, one of the country's most dreaded detention sites. He would spend six weeks there before being released on bail.

"My first interrogation ended at about 8 o'clock that night," Saad Eddin said. "It was just twilight when I arrived at Tora Mazra'at. An elderly, white-haired police corporal was sitting at a desk. He peered at me over his half-glasses: 'Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim?'

"I thought he was reading a newspaper, but it was too early for that, and then he said: 'I'm Ali Hamdan. I was a private here 20 years ago, when you came to do research. It was a long time ago.' He paused for a moment and then he asked, 'What has happened to the world?'

"I saw the human face of Egypt that night in this old man," Saad Eddin said. "Previously, I had seen the brutal face of the state. There have been so many faces of Egypt in all of this, so many threads. There I stood in handcuffs, and I had to comfort this old man."

WASHINGTON - World Tribune, 21 June: Cairo is proceeding with plans to buy North Korean missile engines and up to 300 North Korean technicians are in Egypt for the missile program according to new intelligence reports.

The engines are for the No-Dong missiles, which has a range of between 1,000 and 1,300 kilometers.

The number of North Koreans are said to have increased over the last two years both in Egypt and in neighboring Libya. Much of Egyptian missile development is said to be taking place in Libya, Middle East Newsline reports.

The latest intelligence reports, the officials said, undermine Egypt's credibility and some members of Congress are threatening to review all U.S. aid to Cairo unless the No Dong sale is terminated. The issue was raised last month by then chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher has arrived to a frosty welcome from the Bush administration and Congress due to the reports that Cairo has accelerated cooperation with North Korea in the development of intermediate-range weapons.

Maher is scheduled to meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell today and National Security Council Adviser Condoleezza Rice and congressional leaders on June 22. This is his first official visit to the United States since he became foreign minister.

Officials said Egypt has pledged that it does not cooperate with North Korea and said some of Washington's allegations refer to cooperation that ended in 1996.

Still, Maher will not be extensively questioned regarding the North Korean missile sale. U.S. officials said Maher, who assumed office last month, is not regarded as the right address for such concerns by Washington.

Instead, the officials said, the issue will be raised when Egyptian Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi arrives in Washington later this year. Tantawi is expected to discuss Egyptian request for F-16s and other U.S. weapons.