Washington warily watches Egypt

In Egypt, a lot of people think Mohammed Morsi, their new president, is a faker.

?Absolutely,? said Perihan Abou-Zeid, a 28-year-old Egyptian officer for a media-production company in Cairo. ?He speaks of moderation for the West. But then when Salafists blow up churches, there are no arrest warrants.?

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Or as Raymond Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American Coptic writer, puts it: ?Definitely, he?s hiding. He was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. If you are a leader or member of this organization, its logo is that the ?Koran is our constitution.? Whatever comes out of his mouth otherwise, you can?t be a Muslim Brotherhood leader and not want Shariah law.?

All of that is not lost on the U.S. Congress, which is considering a bill to give Egypt $450 million in emergency aid ? even as the Egyptian government clearly sides with Hamas in its current conflict with Israel. Egypt recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv, and Morsi castigated Israel for what he called ?wanton aggression on the Gaza Strip.? Neither he nor any other Egyptian official offered even glancing acknowledgment of the scores of rockets Hamas fired into Israel, igniting the current crisis, though on Sunday, Egypt was said to be involved in trying to broker a cease-fire.

For that and other reasons, the House, particularly, is rife with skepticism.

?We don?t know yet what this new government really is,? a senior House aide, clearly perplexed, said in an interview. ?What we?ve seen so far is really mixed.?

Or as Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), put it: ?This proposal comes to Congress at a point when the U.S.-Egypt relationship has never been under more scrutiny.? She?s chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid, and added, ?I cannot support it at this time.?

Writing in the Washington Times last summer, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, noted that ?Congress heard disturbing accounts last week of escalating abductions, coerced conversions and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls. These women are being terrorized and, consequently marginalized in the formation of the new Egypt.? He added that abductions have increased in recent months, ?while recovery of women and girls has decreased.?

For decades, Egypt has been the United States? staunchest ally in the Arab world ? the first Arab country to make peace with Israel and home to an intelligence service that Washington officials depended on for reliable information about the region.

For more than 30 years, as a result of the Camp David agreement in 1979, the U.S. has given Egypt up to $2 billion in aid each year. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited the White House almost every year, until his overthrow in 2011. And the United States shared his fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Al Qaeda was more or less born in the Muslim Brotherhood.

Source: http://feeds.politico.com/click.phdo?i=be52aaa92dfd0295cec48ac1f8e20224

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