President Obama pulls away from Mubarak
The Obama administration Saturday continued inching away from the besieged government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as observers in Washington and Cairo began to conclude that the autocrat has little chance of restoring his authority.
Key American officials spent Saturday morning in a two-hour meeting and another hour briefing President Barack Obama that afternoon.
Continue ReadingObama “reiterated our focus on opposing violence and calling for restraint; supporting universal rights and supporting concrete steps that advance political reform within Egypt,” according to a White House description of the later meeting.
But in terms of officials words on the spiraling crisis — one that holds enormous stakes for U.S. foreign policy — administration officials spoke only in a Twittered whisper, allowing Obama’s Friday night call on Mubarak to move swiftly toward political reform to set the tone.
“The people of Egypt no longer accept the status quo. They are looking to their government for a meaningful process to foster real reform,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley wrote Saturday morning. “The Egyptian government can’t reshuffle the deck and then stand pat. President Mubarak’s words pledging reform must be followed by action.”
Obama’s pressure on Mubarak and the fact that defenses of Mubarak and the “stability” he brings the region from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden earlier in the week haven’t been repeated, have led many observers to conclude that the administration is readying for the end of the Mubarak era.
Foreign policy scholar Robert Kagan, who co-chairs the bipartisan Egypt working group that has been urging the administration to prepare for the post-Mubarak era, said he welcomed Obama’s comments, which came after the president spoke with Mubarak Friday night.
“They’re not as on the fence as people think,” Kagan, of the Brookings Institution, said by e-mail Saturday, referring to the U.S. administration. “I think the administration knows there has to be some kind of transition soon.”
That transition appears decreasingly likely to be Mubarak’s son Gamal, whom the BBC reported had arrived with his brother in the United Kingdom, a report Egyptian state television denied. (A State Department official said Saturday he did not know whether the report was true, but noted that similar rumors have been flying for days.) And Mubarak struggled to signal change Saturday without giving into protesters’ demands that he step down, appointing Egyptian intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman as his vice president.
The appointment of the veteran Egyptian security official and Mubarak confidant who has dealt extensively with Washington on the peace process, counter-terrorism, and other security matters, came hours after Mubarak announced overnight that he would dissolve his cabinet and implement political and economic reforms.
The appointment of Suleiman, a Mubarak confidant and foe of Islamic radicals who has a strong working rapport with Washington as well as Israel and other Middle East capitals, could suggest a potential transition figure and bulwark against instability as Mubarak’s exit is envisioned, from Washington’s perspective. But Egyptian protesters are unlikely to be appeased by the appointment, Washington Egypt experts said, given his close association with the Mubarak regime and the human rights abuses and torture perpetrated by Egypt’s security apparatus.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/48412.html#ixzz1CXflFTXb
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