On U.S. TV, Egypt, Israel officials stress continuity (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Egypt's envoy to the United States said on Sunday his country's peace treaty with Israel would stand because it benefited Egypt, while Israel's defense minister said he did not see any risk to their bilateral relationship.

Both officials, in appearances on U.S. news talk shows, stressed continuity in the wake of the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Friday, which left deep uncertainty and huge challenges for America's Middle East policy.

Egypt's ambassador to the United States, Sameh Shoukry, told ABC'S "This Week" the Israeli peace treaty has been beneficial to his country for 30 years and he expected it to remain in place, as military leaders in Cairo have stated.

"We have derived a peace dividend from the treaty," Shoukry said. "We've been able to establish security and stability in the region. And I believe it is a main element in terms of our foreign policy."

Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in a taped interview on the same program, expressed wariness about Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood's potential strength in any elections there but said he said he did not see a threat to Israeli-Egypt ties.

"I don't think that the relationship between Israel and Egypt ... is under any risk or that any kind of operational risk is waiting us just behind the corner," he told ABC.

Barak said he did not think Egypt's uprising was "something similar to the Iranian events" that created a hard-line Islamic state that is a dedicated foe of Israel.

"It was not something that was organized by extremist groups of Muslim radical origins," he said.

"I think that they have to listen to voices from the rest of the world."

While noting the Muslim Brotherhood was not the instigator of the protests that unseated Mubarak, Barak voiced his country's wariness that the group was better-placed than the idealist protesters to win early elections in Egypt.

"Later on, sooner or later, the only group which is coherent, focused, ready to kill and be killed if necessary takes power," he said. "That should be avoided in Egypt because that could be a catastrophe for the whole region."

Barak added, however, that, "We should not very easily compare them to ... the most extremist groups ... it's an Egyptian version. Many of them are less extremist."

Shoukry told ABC that Egypt's interests dictated its ties to the United States and that Washington could count on Cairo's support in the region.

"These issues are driven by mutual interest, by Egyptian interests, and interest remains a close association to the United States," he said.

(Reporting by Paul Eckert; Editing by Bill Trott)

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Australia's floods, cyclone stress Barrier Reef (AP)

CAIRNS, Australia – Murky freshwater runoff from Australia's worst flooding in decades is adding to stresses from pollution and warming seas on the Great Barrier Reef, one of the world's most fragile ecosystems.
Researchers say it is too early to know exactly how much of the reef has been affected by the flooding, which carved a wide path of destruction on land before draining into the sea off the country's northeast coast.
So far, the signs are that damage will be isolated to relatively small portions of the reef, a popular dive site and network of coral structures rich in marine life that stretches more than 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) along the coast.
A narrow band of the reef was battered by a massive cyclone that passed overhead earlier this month and struck the coast with winds of up to 170 miles (280 kilometers) per hour, though the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority that manages the area said damage such as coral breakage was probably limited.
More worrying than the cyclone are the effects of the recent floods, which sent huge plumes of muddy fresh water over coastal portions of the reef, said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a reef expert from the University of Queensland.
Floodwater can hurt reefs in many ways. Coral becomes stressed when the level of salt in the water drops. The high concentration of soil nutrients in floodwater provides food for coral competitors such as certain types of algae. Sediment saps coral of energy by blocking the light it needs to nourish itself, and pesticides in the water can kill the coral outright.
Complicating matters further is the current fragility of the reef, said Hoegh-Guldberg, deputy director of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. In recent years, the reef has suffered from mass bleaching, in which coral under stress expels the colorful algae living in its tissues. Many scientists believe rising sea temperatures are responsible for the bleaching, which can eventually kill the coral.
"Their ability to bounce back from these types of localized impacts is reduced," Hoegh-Guldberg said.
Drenching rains that pounded Australia's northeastern state of Queensland for months sent swollen rivers over their banks, inundating communities as the water made its way downstream to the ocean. Entire towns were swamped, 35 people were killed and more than 35,000 homes damaged or destroyed.
Officials said the inland sea formed by the floodwaters covered an area larger than France and Germany combined, sending huge volumes of fresh water into seas off the coast. The worst of the flooding was south of the southern tip of the reef, though it clipped the edge around the swamped city of Rockhampton.
Nick Graham, a senior research fellow at Queensland's James Cook University, said many parts of the reef closer to shore have adapted to floodwaters, which have become common in the rainy summer season.
Though it's too early to say for certain what additional damage may have been done by the recent floods, "it is probably less significant than we may imagine," he said.
Coral ecologist Alison Jones has been examining several reefs in the Keppel Islands, an area in the reef's southern tail where floodwaters spilled into the sea, and found isolated damage to coral in waters less than 6 1/2 feet (2 meters) deep.
"I wouldn't like there to be another flood because they're certainly pale, they've obviously been starved of light for a few weeks," she said. "But they're doing remarkably well below 2 meters, so that's an enormous relief to me."
She cautioned that her observations were preliminary and limited to one small segment of the reef.
Katharina Fabricius, principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said the severe flooding seen in the Queensland capital of Brisbane was too far south to have affected the reef. But rivers farther north are still carrying water loaded with high levels of nutrients and sediment, which is worrying, Fabricius said.
She said she is more concerned about the cumulative effects of several severe storms and floods in recent years. Five Category 4 or Category 5 cyclones — the two most powerful storm classifications — have roared over the reef in the past six years, while there were only two of that ferocity in the 40 years before that, she said.
"We don't fully understand what happens when a reef is hit by so many types of disturbances so often," she said. "The reefs just don't get enough time to recover from one disturbance before they're hit again."
Scientists predict that extreme weather events will increase in both intensity and frequency due to global warming.
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Associated Press writer Kelly Doherty in Sydney contributed to this report.
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