"Israeli and US arrogance are humiliating us every single day," said the writer who is now putting the final touches to a new novel, "The American Syndrome," that deals indirectly with Iraq.

Ibrahim, now a frail 65, spent five years in jail under then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser for his left-wing advocacy. After his release in 1964, he became one of the most vocal opponents of both Arab regimes and US and Israeli leaders.

"Where is our honour, where is our dignity? Remember Nasser: when he took power he pronounced the words 'pride' and 'dignity' before talking about food, although this was our main concern," he said.

"I hate Saddam Hussein's regime, but there is national resistance in Iraq," he added, referring to battles under way with the US-led coalition. "The situation is very dangerous, it can overflow" to Syria and Turkey, he warned.

While Arab frustration was not born with the war in Iraq, the conflict will make it worse, added the novelist, considered by many as a potential successor of Egyptian Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz.

He recalled his celebrated novel "Zaat," an ironic and poignant work that tells of an Egyptian woman during the presidencies of Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.

"We have lost on all scores," he said in the small living room of his home in Cairo's northern neighbourhood of Heliopolis where sofas upholstered with tapestry sit next to garden chairs in plastic.

"Consider infitah," the economic liberalisation launched by Sadat, "and see its results: the rich have become richer. Look at them go by in their gleaming cars."

"I wrote a novel, "Sharaf" (Honour) that tells of an Egyptian man raped by a Westerner. At the end he is also raped by an Egyptian."

"Why did I choose this end? Because we, Egyptians were first raped by foreigners and are now being raped by Egyptians," he said.

The "American Syndrome" partially unfolds in the United States in 1998, when then president Bill Clinton "was already attacking Iraq," a period closely observed by Ibrahim who then was giving literature courses at the University of California in Berkeley.

"The press was talking about Monica Lewinski," Clinton's mistress, "to avoid talking about the mafias and the corporate mergers in which some were making huge money," he said.

And like many in the Middle East, including in power circles and state-run media, Ibrahim does not believe one second that Osama Bin Laden was behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

"The United States has organised it all," he said, bursting into laughter when hearing the name of the most wanted man in the world. "Bin Laden, he is a myth," he said.

"Mossad (Israel's spy agency) and the CIA are monitoring the evolution of things, they manipulate some people and others to reach their target," whether in Afghanistan, in Iraq or in Egypt. "Our turn will come," he said.

The war in Iraq triggered massive demonstrations in Egypt and across the Muslim world. Mubarak, a key US ally in the Arab world, has warned that the frustration it was creating would make another "100 Bin Ladens."

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