Clinton hints at unease over early Mubarak departure
Monday, 07 February 2011
President Barack Obama said he was confident that an orderly political transition in Egypt would produce a government that will remain a U.S. partner, as Clinton hinted at unease over early Mubarak departure, a step criticized by Egypt's dissident ElBaradei.
In an interview with Fox News late Sunday, Obama also said the ideology of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which is President Hosni Mubarak's best organized opposition group, included anti-U.S. strains.
But the Brotherhood lacked majority support, he said.
"I think that the Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt," Obama said. "They don't have majority support."
"So it's important for us not to say that our only two options are either the Muslim Brotherhood, or a suppressed Egyptian people," he said.
Ideology of Muslim Brotherhood
Even so, Obama acknowledged that the Brotherhood, a banned political and religious group in Egypt, is well-organized and "there are strains of their ideology that are anti-U.S."
Still, he said he had confidence that a representative government the U.S. could work with would emerge "if Egypt moves in an orderly transition process."
"What I want is a representative government in Egypt and I have confidence that if Egypt moves in an orderly transition process, that we'll have a government in Egypt that we can work with together as a partner."
Obama said only Mubarak, who took power in 1981, knew if he would leave office soon.
"The U.S. can't forcefully dictate, but what we can do is say the time is now for you to start making a change in your country. Mubarak has already decided he's not going to run again."
"But here's what we know -- that Egypt is not going to go back to what it was," the U.S. leader said. "The Egyptian people want freedom, they want free and fair elections, they want a representative government, they want a responsible government. So what we have said is you have to start a transition now."
"Utterly critical"
Frank Wisner, the retired U.S. diplomat whom Obama sent to Cairo last week to nudge Mubarak out of the picture, drew attention to the constitutional dilemma on Saturday in remarks to the Munich Security Conference. He also raised a furor by saying that Mubarak was "utterly critical" to the reform process.
That comment bolstered the view in Cairo and elsewhere in the Arab world that Washington had abandoned the protesters in favor of entrenched old guard it has relied on for the past 30 years. It also infuriated the White House, which immediately distanced itself from Wisner, saying he is a private citizen and his views are his own.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped well short of endorsing Wisner's position, and repeated the line that he does not represent the administration. She stressed that decisions on Mubarak's future were up to the Egyptian people.
During the interview on Fox, Obama said the U.S. had long tried to influence Egypt to avoid the kind of revolt that has unfolded over the last two weeks.
"We have also consistently said both publicly and privately that trying to suppress your own people is something that is not sustainable," Obama said. "When you resort to repression, when you resort to violence, that does not work."
"Up to Egyptian people"
Clinton meanwhile said Sunday that the timetable of President Mubarak's departure lies with the Egyptian people but his early departure could raise electoral complications.
However, Clinton, speaking to reporters on the way back from international talks on Egypt in Germany, stressed that Mubarak's fate was not up to the United States.
"That has to be up to the Egyptian people," the chief U.S. diplomat said when asked if reality dictated Mubarak play some role in the political transition toward free and fair elections in Egypt.
"As I understand the constitution, if the president were to resign, he would be succeeded by the speaker of the house, and presidential elections would have to be held in 60 days," she said.
"Now the Egyptians are going to have to grapple with the reality of what they must do," she said.
Clinton said, for example, that she had heard a leader from the opposition Muslim Brotherhood as well as leading dissident Mohammed ElBaradei say "it's going to take time" to organize elections.
"That's not us saying it. It's them saying it," she said.
ElBaradei slams Washington
Leading Egyptian opposition figure ElBaradei, meanwhile, criticized Washington's mixed messages Sunday on the crisis roiling the most populous Arab nation and blasted "opaque" political talks in Egypt.
The remarks on Saturday by Frank Wisner "created a lot of confusion, a lot of disappointment" in Egypt, ElBaradei told CNN.
The bookish Nobel Peace Prize-winning former head of the U.N. atomic energy agency elaborated more colorfully in another interview. It "came down here like a piece of lead," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."
Senator John Kerry, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came to the Obama administration's defense, insisting the U.S. position has been "crystal clear."
"The president has been clear, the secretary of state has been clear that the president wants change, he wants it immediately, he wants it to be meaningful and he wants it to be orderly," Kerry told NBC.
Kerry admitted that Wisner, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, had perhaps spoken out of turn.
"I think that Mr. Wisner's comments just don't reflect where the administration has been from day one, and that was not the message that he was asked to deliver or did deliver there."
Egypt's former Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid hit out at what he described as "extremely short-sighted" U.S. "interference."
"I think it is positive for the rest of the world to support Egypt in making the democratic transition, but I think it is not in the right of... President Obama or the American government or any other government to dictate (to) Egypt what to do," he told CNN.
ElBaradei returned to Egypt shortly after the anti-Mubarak protests began and has joined demonstrations calling for the president's ouster. He has positioned himself as an opposition interlocutor but was not invited to join Sunday's landmark talks between the government and opposition groups.
"The process is opaque. Nobody knows who is talking to whom at this stage," he told NBC, pointing to the "huge lack of confidence" between demonstrators and the government.
"If you really want to build confidence, you need to engage the rest of the Egyptian people -- the civilians."
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