Egypt's People's Assembly Speaker Dr. Ahmed Fathi Sorour held the world order in general and the UN Security Council in particular responsible for a lack of favorable environment that guarantees democracy and human rights to all peoples without discrimination.

In a lecture he gave on democracy and human rights in Egypt at the Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Wednesday night, Sorour said there can never be democracy without human rights and vice versa.

Democracy cannot be imposed because it is a domestic issue in the first place and has to be decided by the whole society and people in conformity with their own conditions, he said. He referred to lack of international environment that guarantees all rights to all peoples without discrimination.

The Palestinian issue is a very good example of the UNSC's failure, he said, referring to the division, violence and fundamentalism in the Middle East that ensued. The remarsk were made at a joint press conference with Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the U.S. House after the opening session of an international parliamentary conference