Envoys and real work pass each other by in Cairo

By Jonathan Wright

CAIRO (Reuters) - On screen there's the succession of foreign ministers and envoys in suits, mostly European men, lamenting the death and destruction in Gaza and calling on Israel and the Islamist group Hamas to stop the fighting.

They come to Cairo at a rate of one or two a day, drop in on the presidential palace, the foreign ministry and the Arab League, pronounce some platitudes to the television cameras, then fly off to another Middle East capital.

Few of them have any ideas to announce and they are dependent on Egypt and Syria to know the views of Hamas, an organisation their governments have refused to deal with.

In the last 10 days the foreign ministers of France, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Spain, Germany, Brazil, as well as envoys and senior officials from the United Nations, the European Union and the Middle East Quartet have passed through.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined them on Wednesday, repeating his call for a truce but offering no new proposals.

Then there is the real work, which takes place behind the scenes by Egyptian intelligence, without fanfare, briefings or statements to the media.

Diplomats based in Cairo say that even the Egyptian Foreign Ministry is often out of the loop when it comes to day-to-day knowledge of the state of the secret talks.

At the centre of the process stands intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the eminence grise behind Egypt's Palestinian policy, a tough and taciturn negotiator who rarely shows his face.