Obama considers new diplomat in Egypt
White House officials say President Obama is considering a recommendation to nominate the current U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, to be America’s next top diplomat in Egypt. The officials said Tuesday that Secretary of State John Kerry has put Ford’s name forward to take the Cairo post, which will soon be vacated by Anne Patterson. She has been tapped to become assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. The officials said a decision on Ford’s potential nomination could come in the next two weeks. Ford has been ambassador to Syria since January 2011, but has not lived in Damascus since February 2012, when the State Department suspended embassy operations there.
Egypt’s interim government was expected to announce that talks with two senior U.S. senators — both deployed to Egypt by President Barack Obama to help resolve the nation’s growing political crisis — have failed, a state-run Egyptian newspaper reported Tuesday.
The report by Al-Ahram came after both Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham delivered a strong message to Egypt’s military-backed government Tuesday, saying it should release detained members of the Muslim Brotherhood and begin negotiations with the group to swiftly return the Arab nation to democratic rule.
Both warned that relations between the United States and Egypt might otherwise be harmed.
“Some in Congress want to sever the relationship. Some want to suspend the aid,” Graham said. “We have to be honest to where the relationship stands. … We can’t support Egypt that is not moving to democracy.”
McCain and Graham spoke at a news conference after meeting with top military and civilian leaders in Cairo as part of a flurry of international efforts to resolve a standoff between the new government and supporters of the ousted president, Mohammed Morsi.
McCain said, “we urge the release of political prisoners,” referring to Brotherhood members who were detained after the military ousted Morsi, an Islamist, a month ago.
“In democracy, you sit down and talk to each other,” Graham said, adding, “it is impossible to talk to somebody who is in jail.”
The two men’s mission reflected Washington’s anxiety at events in Egypt, a bulwark of its Middle East policy and the first Arab state to make peace with Israel.
Sherief Shawki, a spokesman for Egypt’s military-backed government, denounced foreign pressure in a sign of its growing impatience with international mediations, and gave a cool response to the senators’ words.
He rejected their characterization of Morsi’s overthrow as a coup and said the new authorities, installed by the army, had spelled out a plan for a political transition and new elections.
“There is a roadmap which means that what happened was not a coup and that it was Egyptian people who decided on the roadmap put (forward) by the military and which represents the Egyptian people. We don’t want foreign intervention to be imposed on us.”
The government would stick by that plan, he said. He also rejected the call to release jailed Brotherhood members, saying they would be dealt with by the courts.
Graham countered: “The people who are in charge were not elected. The people who were elected are in jail. The status quo is not acceptable.”
The Senators went even further, describing Morsi’s overthrow as a coup — a definition that is hotly disputed by the rival Egyptian sides and among U.S. officials, and could trigger a cut-off off in the $1.3 billion U.S. military aid Egypt receives each year.
However, “cutting off aid would be the wrong signal at the wrong time,” McCain said.
Top Egyptian officials said reconciliation is a priority but only after the Brotherhood renounces violence. They cite sectarian violence in southern Egypt, cases of torture of anti-Morsi protesters and the blocking of main roads. But many Morsi supporters remained defiant, saying there will be no room for discussions with negotiators without the restoration of his presidency.
Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president who came to power nearly a year and a half after the ouster of his predecessor Hosni Mubarak in a 2011 uprising, has been held at a secret location since his ouster.
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