Many political analysts criticized President Bush's speech in Abu Dhabi this week for its omissions, mostly to do with leaving out context and facts about recent Middle Eastern elections, human rights issues, Iranian influence in the region and the prospects for an Arab-Israeli peace agreement.

Egyptian officials reportedly are joining the critics' circle with a beef of their own. The independent Cairo newspaper Al Masry al Youm published a story yesterday that quoted unnamed sources as saying Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit was hopping mad that Bush failed to mention Egypt in a portion of his speech that praised several Arab nations for holding elections and introducing other nascent democratic reforms.

According to the daily, along with other Cairo papers, the Egyptian government also interpreted Bush's mild jab about detaining opposition candidates as a thinly veiled reference to the jailed reform activist and former presidential contender Ayman Nour. (Perhaps the region's other authoritarian governments let out a collective sigh of relief: "Oh, he was talking about Egypt! Whew, thought that was us for a second!")

Al Masry al Youm's anonymous sources told the paper that Aboul Gheit, at a private meeting of top officials from Egypt's ruling party, said the United States is "lost," its foreign policy is "defunct," and that Bush's brief stop in Egypt tomorrow will be of "absolutely no use."

"If he was going to take any action, he would have done so before. But we'll meet him anyway. This is public relations," the newspaper quoted Aboul Gheit as saying, based on interviews with officials who reportedly were present at the meeting.

The Egyptian foreign ministry flatly denied the exchange ever took place and issued a statement yesterday that called the account false. When my colleague Miret in Cairo checked out the story, senior party officials said the main topics of the meeting were conditions placed on the annual $2 billion U.S. aid package for Egypt, the deterioration of security in Iraq, and sticking points in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

"These are complete lies," said Hossam Zaki, spokesman for the foreign ministry, referring to the remarks attributed to Aboul Gheit.

Mohamed Kamal, a close adviser to the younger Mubarak (President Hosni's son and possible successor, Gamal), said the subject of Bush's speech did come up, but not at all in the sensational manner recounted by Al Masry al Youm.

"There were criticisms, but not in this fashion and not in these words," Kamal said in a phone interview. He declined to get into the specifics of what the criticisms entailed.

What really happened? There are a number of scenarios:

A. Aboul Gheit did vent about the speech and then backtracked when the remarks became public, maybe out of fear that Bush's two-hour meeting with Mubarak, scheduled for tomorrow at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh, would devolve into a full-fledged snub.

B. Aboul Gheit did vent about the speech, had aides leak the remarks to the press and, satisfied that the message had reached the right ears, promptly denied ever having said such a thing.

C. Aboul Gheit said nothing of the sort. After all, al Masry al Youm has published some rather dubious reports lately, including the assertion that Sharm el Sheikh was crawling with "an estimated 2,000 CIA agents" ahead of Bush's visit.

We'll continue to look into this as Bush wraps up his visit to Riyadh today and hopscotches over to Sharm tomorrow for the final leg of his eight-day Middle East tour.