السفير الكويتي سالم الصباح وزوجته ريما يتحركان بشكل اكثر انفتاحا لاستمالة الرأي العام الاميركي.

الذي يثير الأستغراب هو تهدم القيم العربية الأصيلة والبعد عن الدين الأسلامي في تعامل الجماعات التي تحكم في بلداننا والتعامل العلني والفاضح في هذا السياق لمــــــــــــــــــــــــــاذا؟؟؟


التقرير مشفوع بالصور... ويقول ضمنا ان السفير الكويتي يستخدم زوجته التي تشبه عارضات ازياء باريس للتأثير على الأميركان وكسب ودهم. ويفخر بان اغلب النساء في الكويت لا يلبسن العباءة-ان صدقت ترجمتي - لكلمة veil

مالي خلق اترجم هاليوم.. ولكم ان تقرأوا الموضوع بلغته الأصلية.
انه حقا امر مقرف.. مع الأسف الشديد.





washingtonpost.com
Diplomatic Duo
Kuwait's Ambassador and His Wife Use Charm to Dispel Americans' Stereotypes

By Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 26, 2003; Page C01





Kuwaiti Ambassador Salem Sabah and his wife, Rima, consider themselves a diplomatic team. "My husband handles the political and I handle the social," she says. (Allison Silberberg For The Washington Post)


الموضوع
Kuwaiti Ambassador Salem Abdullah Jaber Sabah was casually chatting with a prominent senator and his wife. "So," the wife asked, "when are you going to let women in Kuwait take off the veil?"

Sabah could have explained that women in his country dress as they please, that most women in Kuwait don't wear the veil. He could have even launched into a tutorial on religious tolerance in the tiny Persian Gulf state. Or simply and politely changed the subject entirely. Instead, he smiled and said, "Madam, you have not met my wife yet."


© 2003 The Washington Post Company Rima Sabah likes to blast into a room looking like a Paris model, blond hair cascading past her shoulders, her 5-foot-9, size 4 body clad in designer suits and outrageously sexy stilettos -- the higher, the better. The mother of three young boys is equally capable of discussing politics, fashion and computer games.


"People focus on Rima because she's so beautiful and smart as a whip," says Lynda Webster, wife of former FBI and CIA director William Webster. "Even though the ambassador may be quieter, he's just charming. He has a sparkle in his eye that I admire. There's play in that guy."

They are perhaps the most visible of Washington's Arab ambassadorial couples, a group of increasingly young, savvy envoys and their wives who shatter the stereotype of overbearing men and invisible women. As Kuwait turns into a staging ground for U.S. troops, the Sabahs find themselves defending their country, their culture and their loyalties to both the Western and Arab worlds.

"They're in a difficult position," says James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group. "There's a war brewing. In the middle of all that, they're attempting to build bridges and define a common ground. It's a tough place to be."

And so they talk -- and charm and entertain, and then talk some more to anybody willing to listen. This night the ambassador and his wife are hosting a reception at their residence for the Wharton Club of Washington, D.C., a group of alumni from Philadelphia's Wharton School and friends interested in Kuwait and its role in the global economy.

After an hour of introductions and small talk, the ambassador offers a short history lesson: His country, about the size of New Jersey, is bordered by Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. It was a country of commercial traders before independence from Britain in 1961 -- and before oil was the major export. Oil made it one of the richest nations in the Gulf, wealth that was poured back into tax-free education, jobs and health care for all 800,000 citizens, as well as international investments and support for neighboring Arab states.

Kuwait sits on 10 percent of the world's oil reserves; oil revenues make up 90 percent of the country's budget. So the possibility of another assault by Saddam Hussein -- similar or worse than in 1990 -- is devastating.

"The Kuwaitis are in a precarious position," says Zogby. "If the invasion did anything -- and it was a defining moment for them -- it exposed their vulnerability, and they've felt it ever since. They live waiting for the other shoe to drop."

And so Sabah makes his case to the Wharton alumni: Disarming Iraq is more than a matter of economic survival, it is a matter of life or death.

"I want to leave you with one thought," he says: "Kuwait is your strongest and firmest ally in the Gulf region."

It is an impressive performance, even though his audience knows it's his job to put the most sympathetic spin on his country.

There's another hour of answering questions, small talk, posing for pictures. Then the ambassador slips into a late meeting, and his wife kicks off the killer heels, sneaks a cigarette, then heads off to the boys.


Diapers in the Desert
"It's teamwork," she says. "If you want to make it, it has to be a team."

They are well suited for this job, with complementary temperaments and tastes. They speak Arabic, French and English, sometimes flipping through all three in the same sentence. Rima, 40, is the extrovert, quick to smile and engage. Salem, 45, is lower-key and smooth as silk.

They met as students at American University in Beirut. Salem was part of the large ruling family of Kuwait; his father was the country's minister of education and close adviser to his brother-in-law, the country's emir, Sheik Jabir Ahmed Sabah. Naturally, politics was always the topic at the dinner table. "I found myself intrigued by it," says the ambassador. "When kids my age were reading comics, I was flipping through newspapers."

Rima was born in Lebanon to a family of academics. Both parents received degrees from the Sorbonne. "It was always a question of education," she says, which is why her father allowed her to work as a model only once. She decided she wanted to study criminal law, a subject not taught at the university then. Her father made a deal: Get an undergraduate degree in Beirut, and if she still wanted to pursue a career in law, he'd send her to Paris.

Her second choice was international politics; Salem was pursuing a master's in political science. Sparks flew. "It was instant attraction," she says. "It was a meeting of the minds. We talked for, like, four hours."

Their six-year courtship included her year-long stint as a journalist for United Press International, but marriage charted a different course. Rima, brought up as a Catholic, converted to Islam. Salem entered Kuwait's foreign service, working for the minister of foreign affairs.

Their first son was 4 months old when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The young family fled 12 days into the invasion -- across the desert with 52 relatives in eight cars. Their luggage: diapers and water.

"It was a bit of an Indiana Jones adventure," the ambassador says lightly. They made it to the Saudi Arabian border, unclear when -- or if -- they could return home. Salem was sent to Kuwait's mission in New York, where the couple spent seven years and had two more sons. In 1998 he was named ambassador to South Korea, then tapped to become Kuwait's ambassador here. The family arrived in Washington in the last week of August 2001.

They were, as they must keep saying, truly shocked and horrified by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, stunned that the "criminals" had hijacked their religion, their culture. Since that day, they've been trying to explain that to Americans.

"I remember the next day," says Rima. "I had been invited to lunch by an American lady I didn't know yet. She was a friend of my predecessor. I thought, of course, the lunch is canceled. But they said, 'No, we're going to have the lunch because we want to show that life goes on.' I had never met this lady. She came to pick me up -- we were still living at the hotel -- and I got into the car. She said, 'Did you see what you Arabs did?' "

Now the Sabahs spend every day talking, trying to clear the fog and soothe fears on both sides.

"There's a lot of misperceptions in America toward the Arab world, and vice versa," says the ambassador. "America looks at the Arab world as backward and violent, and in the Arab world America is seen as aggressive and arrogant. For a person like me, who knows America so well and loves America so well and is from the Arab world, I find myself in sort of a limbo. I go back home and find myself defending America. I come to America and find myself defending the Arab world."

The couple could have decided to take the easy course, a behind-the-scenes profile. Instead, they've decided to divide and conquer. "My husband handles the political and I handle the social," Rima says. "We go out a lot -- a lot!"

They have flung open their doors to Washington, a city they both like and have worked hard to get to know. Rima is involved with the Mosaic Foundation (founded by the wives of Arab ambassadors), CARE, VSA arts, and other charities. They've hosted a screening for a Kuwaiti filmmaker, farewell dinners for the departing French and British ambassadors, and dozens of receptions.

"She's very hands-on about combining the two cultures," says Debbie Dingell, wife of Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), whose district has a large Arab American population. "The guest list, the menu, the entertainment and the ambiance are all geared to helping understand each other. It's all about building bridges."

"They're social, intelligent, exciting and a good-looking couple," says Nancy Bagley, editor of Washington Life magazine, which put the couple on its exclusive 2003 "Washington A List."

And so the invitations flood in. "We are out at least five nights a week, and sometimes six," says Rima. It is work. Enjoyable, but still work. They try to reserve weekends for the children, but there is never enough time.

"You see the bags under my eyes?" says the ambassador, only half-joking.


Balancing Act
Beyond their efforts as a couple, Rima has her own mission: "In my case, what I've been doing is to try to break the stereotype of the Arab woman and of the Arab culture."

She is offended by images of Arab women as dependent, uneducated, easily cowed, when many are intelligent, stylish, independent. "This is the side of the Arab woman I really wanted Washington to see," she says.

So it's no small irony that Kuwaiti women don't have the vote -- theirs is one of the few Arab countries that still deny women that right. A 1999 proposal backed by the emir was voted down by Kuwait's parliament; the issue is expected to come up again next year.

"I think our women in Kuwait have a lot of rights and are powerful, despite the fact they do not as yet have the vote," says Rima. "We will get it. It's only a matter of time."

Democracy, the ambassador explains carefully, should evolve organically. Women in the United States had to wait almost 150 years before they got the vote. "My country is 41 years old," he says. "Give us a chance."

But right now there is the pressing concern of a looming war. Kuwait has spent the last 12 years repairing the physical and psychological damage from the first Iraqi invasion. "One of the things that shocked a lot of Kuwaitis during the invasion was that a lot of the countries Kuwait was very, very generous to did not support us at that time," says Sabah. "But that's old history."

Now his country faces . . . well, no one knows for sure.

Kuwait has invested billions into international trade and forged military agreements with the United States and other Western powers while still trying to preserve its identity as an Arab nation.

"The Arab world, in our culture and our psyche, is the family and the extended family and the extended-extended family," says the ambassador. "So when somebody in the Arab world sees a Palestinian killed, he feels that somebody close to him has been dealt a blow. We have a lot of problems among Arab countries, but there is the undercurrent of kinship."

Which leaves Kuwait painted into an uncomfortable corner: an Arab nation dependent on the United States for survival, yet puzzled and frustrated by America's ineffectiveness at making its policies understood in the Middle East. There have been three attacks on Americans in Kuwait in the past few months -- attacks that reportedly represent a rising tide of anti-American resentment.

The official view -- and Sabah's -- is that this small fringe group of Islamic extremists has learned to use the media to advance its position. "The majority of Kuwaitis -- I can say that in all confidence -- love America and never will forget what America did for us," he says. "America gave us back our country. How could we ever forget that?"

And now U.S. soldiers are amassing in his nation. The war is not one Kuwaitis seek, he says, but their country is at grave risk from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and wants Iraq disarmed. To that end, Kuwait is doing its part within the international community.

The opposition to war in the Arab world, he says, has little to do with support for Saddam Hussein -- there's certainly no love lost for him in Kuwait -- and is primarily a concern for further harm to Arab civilians. "My paramount hope is that [Saddam] would leave peacefully," he says, in the next breath admitting it was very unlikely.

These are the issues he spends most of his time explaining -- quite successfully, by most accounts.

Washington venture capitalist Mel Estrin met the Sabahs at a dinner party about six months ago and was immediately taken by the couple. "They are approachable," he says. "You want to know them better and have an open mind to their country. You give any preconceived ideas a new airing, especially in these times."

It's smart business, says Estrin: "If you don't get in the door, you can't make the sale. They not only get in the door -- you want to invite them in."


A Reason to Celebrate
So what now? A waiting game.

"They're the right couple at the right place at the right time," says Debbie Dingell.

Tonight, they'll host Kuwait's National Day party at the Willard Hotel. It's a dual celebration: independence from Britain, and liberation from Iraqi occupation. The ballroom will be filled with roses, food and 600 of the Sabahs' closest pals. "It's a chance to celebrate the independence of our country with friends," says Rima. "The fact we have a free and sovereign Kuwait."

And maybe shatter another stereotype or two.

"In times of crisis like these, your work counts," says Salem. "You can make a difference. I think Rima and I are making a difference."