EGYPT - Feb. 29 - 8 Suspected Brotherhood Members Arrested.

Security sources say police have arrested 8 suspected members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. They say state security prosecutors were expected to order their detention for 15 days pending investigations. (The Brotherhood, the largest Muslim fundamentalist group, was banned in 1954 by military ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, but has enjoyed periods of official tolerance. The government began referring members to military courts in 1995, accusing the group of having links to Muslim militants trying to topple Pres. Mubarak's government. The Brotherhood advocates turning the country into a strict Muslim state.) 20 alleged members currently are on trial in a military court, accused of planning to use unions to revive the group's activities. Rights groups say Brotherhood detainees are released after being held for a maximum 60 days.

Mar. 3 - Emergency Law Protects Stability: Interior Minister Habib El Adli is quoted as saying a decision to renew a 19-year-old emergency law for 3 years was necessary to ensure the country's security and stability. Adli tells the daily 'Al Ahram newspaper in an interview: "The urgent need to re-apply the emergency law stemmed from our concern and commitment to maintain stability using our own capabilities, taking into account external changes, which may affect us at home". On Feb. 27, human rights activists and opposition parties attacked the Egyptian parliament's decision, on Feb. 26, to extend the measure, which gives security forces broad powers of arrest and detention, until May 31, 2003. They said the law, imposed after the assassination of Pres. Anwar Sadat by militant Muslim soldiers in 1981, had not prevented violence by militant groups. Adli says: "We must not forget that authorisations under the emergency law contributed to a large extent in the last years to giving security bodies the necessary power to thwart terrorist's plans, destroy their foundations and close in on their elements".

He adds: "In Egypt, the risks of terrorism have been brought under control, but nobody can claim to have overcome terrorism unless they can claim to have overcome the crime". (A campaign by militant Muslims to topple the secular government of Pres. Mubarak seems all but over, at a cost of 1,200 lives, mostly militants and police, and repression by security forces. There have been few, if any, attacks since the Luxor massacre in 1997 by the main militant group, Al Gama'a Al Islamiya, which has declared a cease-fire.) Adli says at the top of the list of threats against national security were drugs and thuggery. (Egypt convicted 30,771 people for drug-related crimes and heard 29,132 cases in 1999 versus 27,821 convictions and 26,109 cases in 1998.) Asked whether he thought the renewal of the emergency law would drive investors away, Adli says private investments had flourished in the last few years under the law, which he adds made investors more confident of the government's keenness to provide a secure environment for their investments.