This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration plans to suspend a substantial portion of American military aid to Egypt, several administration officials said Tuesday, after last summer’s deadly crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and the recent surge in violence there.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday announced a modest and temporary freeze on military assistance to Egypt.
The decision, which is expected to be announced in the coming days, will hold up the delivery of several types of military hardware to the Egyptian military, these officials said, including tanks, helicopters and fighter jets. But it will not affect aid for counterterrorism operations or for border security issues involving the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza.
To signal its displeasure with the Egyptian military’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the United States will withhold the delivery of Apache attack helicopters, Harpoon missiles and M1-A1 tanks parts. It will also hold up $260 million in aid for the Egyptian budget.
The administration’s move follows a lengthy review that began in August after days of bloody attacks on supporters of Egypt’s ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, which left hundreds of people dead. The administration had already frozen the shipment of four F-16 fighter jets and canceled joint military exercises with the Egyptian Army.
But the administration will continue aid for Egypt’s counterterrorism programs and its efforts to protect its borders and secure the Sinai Peninsula, which has become a haven for extremists. Programs to train and educate Egyptian military officials in the United States will also be continued.
The United States will also suspend nonmilitary aid that flows directly to the government, but not support for other activities like education or hospitals, the officials said.
American officials emphasized that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had a friendly phone conversation on Wednesday with Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the army chief who led the ouster in July of Mohamed Morsi, the president elected with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Israel has been intimately involved in the Obama administration’s discussions over the cutbacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that any withdrawal of aid is a concern.
The White House has taken the position that it does not regard Mr. Morsi’s ouster as a “coup.” But in presenting its decision on aid on Wednesday, administration officials continued to stress that the Egyptian military’s heavy-handed crackdown on supporters of Mr. Morsi was not acceptable.
One official in Jerusalem, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that while Israel had concerns of its own about stability in Egypt and issues related to the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty, it understood the bigger picture of America’s interests and need to wield its influence in Egypt.
Still, in explaining their moves, American officials sounded more as if they were affirming a valuable relationship than delivering a punishing rebuke.
“We have shared our opinion on the big principles of what is useful and what is not useful with Egypt,” the official said, referring to the period after this summer’s ouster of Mr. Morsi, when Israel was asking Washington not to cut aid to Egypt, arguing that any weakening of the Egyptian Army would hurt the chances of stabilizing the country.
The assistance the administration is holding back, officials said, could be restored if General Sisi takes steps toward restoring democracy.
The decision, which was first reported Tuesday by CNN, does not amount to an across-the-board cutoff of aid to the Egyptian government, officials said. But they said Mr. Obama felt compelled to take stronger action, especially after street clashes erupted in several Egyptian cities on Sunday, killing more than 50 people.
The administration’s explanation of its policy appeared to leave plenty of room for the prompt resumption of aid, if events in Egypt proceed according to the current plans of its new military-backed government.
Under the administration’s plan, officials said, the military aid could be restored later if the Egyptian government showed signs of restoring democratic institutions and a new government.
According to its timetable, a 50-member committee is scheduled to complete work within a few weeks on a package of constitutional amendments, and the revisions are expected to move swiftly to a national referendum.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said: “Reports that we are halting all military assistance to Egypt are false. We will announce the future of our assistance program with Egypt in the coming days.”
Most analysts say the package is likely to win approval, in part because the government has jailed most leaders of the Islamist opposition and shut down most of its news media. And if it does pass, the charter’s ratification could give the Obama administration a chance to reopen some of the suspended aid.
Mr. Obama, she noted, said at the United Nations General Assembly last month that the “assistance relationship will continue.”
The details and tone of what American officials called their “recalibration” of American military assistance prompted an indifferent reaction from Egyptian officials.
In that speech, however, Mr. Obama was critical of Egypt’s military-backed government and warned that the delivery of American military hardware could be affected if it did not take steps to put the country on the path to a democratic transition.
Israeli officials, on the other hand, initially expressed concern.
While acknowledging that Mr. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-led government had lost the support of a large part of the Egyptian public before the military ousted him in July, Mr. Obama said the interim government “has made decisions inconsistent with inclusive democracy.”
The anomalous reactions, in which the recipient of the aid appeared less worried than its ostensible rival, illustrated the awkward triangle of public and private relationships that has grown up around the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel that the United States helped seal three decades ago — and also why, for Washington, trimming the aid is an ungainly tactic.
While the United States will continue to provide nonmilitary aid for education and other social programs that benefit the Egyptian people, he said, “we have not proceeded with the delivery of certain military systems, and our support will depend upon Egypt’s progress in pursuing a more democratic path.”
For Israel, the American aid to Egypt is a vital ingredient in holding the peace together, even though it is not an explicit part of either the Camp David accords reached in 1978 or the treaty signed the next year.
Human rights advocates said they hoped Mr. Obama would make the decision as a way to stand firmly against the repression in Cairo.
“Our interest is basically having the peace with Egypt continue,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said last week in a radio interview, adding, “That peace was premised on American aid to Egypt, and I think that for us is the most important consideration, and I’m sure that’s taken under advisement in Washington.”
“It’s important for the administration to articulate why it is taking such steps rather than have aid suffer death by a thousand cuts,” said David J. Kramer, the president of Freedom House, a group that promotes democracy. “The military’s road map is increasingly clouded by its brutal crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood.”
David
D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.
Of the $1.55 billion in total assistance the White House requested for 2014, $1.3 billion is military and $250 million is economic. The civilian aid is used for programs that include training and projects run by the United States Agency for International Development.
Of the $1.3 billion in military aid appropriated this year, about $585 million had yet to be disbursed when the administration’s review began. It had not been deposited in an account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where the Egyptian military could use it to buy weapons and spare parts and to pay for maintenance and training.
For Mr. Obama, the decision on aid is complex because he faces political pressures at home and abroad. Israel has opposed the cutoff of aid because it fears that the Egyptian military could scale back its security operations in Sinai, allowing the Islamic militant group Hamas to smuggle more rockets through the area to Gaza, where they are fired on Israel.
Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, who is in the United States this week for talks, met with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday. Mr. Hagel has frequently been in contact with Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the army chief who led the ouster of Mr. Morsi. But the Defense Department said in a statement late Tuesday, “The Pentagon is not commenting tonight on press reports regarding aid to the government of Egypt.”
Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington, and Isabel Kershner and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem.
