Obama Pushes Mubarak to Reform
Bloomberg reports:
The White House is prepared to step up its criticism of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a key Middle East ally, if his government intensifies its crackdown on protesters, said an administration official.
President Barack Obama privately pressed Mubarak in a telephone call last week to embrace democratic changes, said the official, who requested anonymity. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday said Mubarak, in power since 1981, has an “important opportunity” to enact economic, political and social reforms.
“We call on all parties to exercise restraint and refrain from violence,” she told reporters in Washington. “We urge the Egyptian authorities not to prevent peaceful protests nor block communications, including on social media sites.”
The message that White House officials want Mubarak to hear is that he should seize the protests as an opportunity to reform state institutions and not use them as a pretext to strengthen his grip on power, the administration officials said yesterday.
Egyptian stocks tumbled the most in more than a year and bonds fell after thousands took to the streets of the capital in protests against Mubarak. The yield on Egypt’s 2040 dollar- denominated bonds jumped 40 basis points since the uprising that ousted Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on Jan. 14. They were yielding 7 percent, the highest level since July, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The U.S. has a major stake in what happens in Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, a moderate voice in the Muslim world and a key player in Middle East peace efforts. Egypt is the fourth largest recipient of American aid after Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel, based on the State Department’s budget request for the current fiscal year.
The Obama administration needs to move cautiously, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.
“There isn’t just the morning after to think about, there is the decade after,” he said in a telephone interview. “For the U.S. to get out in front now would be premature and potentially dangerous.”
Shadi Hamid, an expert on Islamist politics and democratic reform in the Middle East at the Brookings Institution, said the large pro-democracy protests may have broken the “psychological barrier of fear” among Egyptians.
"The U.S. does not want to see the Egyptian regime fall any time soon,’’ Hamid said in a telephone interview. “But people who are protesting, the tens of thousands, do want to see the regime fall some time soon. They are diametrically opposed interests."
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