.- The Security Conference in Munich (southern Germany) opens on Friday with an eye on the Egyptian crisis and stalled negotiations in the Middle East peace. The annual three-day conference that brings together heads of government, ministers, senior military officers and experts will also address other pressing issues such as Iran, Afghanistan, relations between Russia and NATO, China and disarmament.
The U.S. diplomat Hillary Clinton, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among the 750 participants in this conference, which will also discuss cyber warfare or reductions in military spending as a result of the economic crisis. On Saturday, Clinton and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and Ban EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will meet within the Middle East Quartet to discuss how they could restart the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
There is also the presence of U.S. Middle East representative, George Mitchell, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Quartet representative. Peace talks on the Middle East are at a standstill because of Israel's refusal to extend a moratorium on Jewish settlement in the occupied territories.
But it seems that the protagonist of this edition will be Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. It will probably be the talk of the small committee meetings, so characteristic of this type of conference. And Egypt is a key Western ally and key partner of the United States in the region.
"The Israelis and the U.S. government fear that a new Egyptian government (...) take a new direction," says Thomas Hasel, an expert on North Africa at the Free University of Berlin. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday came to shake the specter of an Iranian style regime in Egypt in the event of "an organized Islamic movement to take control of the state" under cover "chaos." Egypt appears of course in many parts of our radar screen, "said Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador who chairs the organization of the conference in Munich.
Among those who will come to Munich also include British Prime Minister David Cameron, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Clinton and Lavrov will take this opportunity to formalize the new Russian-American treaty of nuclear disarmament START, which provides that each of their countries to deploy more than 550 thousand nuclear warheads.
It is not immediately clear if Iran will be represented in Munich. It was in previous editions but now the Iranian-German relations go through a bad time because of the arrest of two German journalists in the Islamic Republic. However, the Iranian case will slip in the roundtable on cybersecurity. 
The U.S. diplomat Hillary Clinton, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are among the 750 participants in this conference, which will also discuss cyber warfare or reductions in military spending as a result of the economic crisis. On Saturday, Clinton and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and Ban EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will meet within the Middle East Quartet to discuss how they could restart the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
There is also the presence of U.S. Middle East representative, George Mitchell, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Quartet representative. Peace talks on the Middle East are at a standstill because of Israel's refusal to extend a moratorium on Jewish settlement in the occupied territories.
But it seems that the protagonist of this edition will be Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. It will probably be the talk of the small committee meetings, so characteristic of this type of conference. And Egypt is a key Western ally and key partner of the United States in the region.
"The Israelis and the U.S. government fear that a new Egyptian government (...) take a new direction," says Thomas Hasel, an expert on North Africa at the Free University of Berlin. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday came to shake the specter of an Iranian style regime in Egypt in the event of "an organized Islamic movement to take control of the state" under cover "chaos." Egypt appears of course in many parts of our radar screen, "said Wolfgang Ischinger, former German ambassador who chairs the organization of the conference in Munich.
Among those who will come to Munich also include British Prime Minister David Cameron, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Clinton and Lavrov will take this opportunity to formalize the new Russian-American treaty of nuclear disarmament START, which provides that each of their countries to deploy more than 550 thousand nuclear warheads.
It is not immediately clear if Iran will be represented in Munich. It was in previous editions but now the Iranian-German relations go through a bad time because of the arrest of two German journalists in the Islamic Republic. However, the Iranian case will slip in the roundtable on cybersecurity.
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