US PRESSES EGYPT BUT KEEPS AID
Washington, 24 Ramadan 1434/1 August 2013 (MINA) – The United States on Wednesday urged Egypt to respect freedom of assembly after mass violence against pro-Muhammad Mursi.
But U.S. lawmakers defeated a bid to cut aid over the ouster of elected president Mohamed Morsi, the Channel News Asia quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.
Egypt’s army-backed cabinet issued orders to end two sit-ins in Cairo squares, calling them a “threat to national security,” days after 82 pro-Morsi protesters were shot dead.
“We have continued to urge the interim government officials and security forces to respect the right of peaceful assembly. That obviously includes sit-ins,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.
“We’ve made that point publicly and privately, and we’ll continue to do so,” she said.
She declined to state whether the United States specifically raised concerns about the latest orders.
The United States has repeatedly called on Egyptian authorities to exercise restraint after the army on July 3 threw out Morsi, an Islamist who was the country’s first democratically elected leader.
But President Barack Obama’s administration has refrained from calling Morsi’s overthrow a coup, a designation that would require the United States to halt its US$1.5 billion in annual aid to Egypt.
The Senate easily rejected a bid to end assistance by Senator Rand Paul, a staunch critic of US foreign aid and star in the conservative populist Tea Party movement.
The Kentucky lawmaker took to the Senate floor to denounce Obama for not identifying Morsi’s ouster as a coup and allegedly ignoring urban blight at home in cities such as Detroit.
“When a military coup overturns a democratically elected government, all military aid must end. That’s the law. There is no presidential waiver,” Paul said.
“So when the military coup occurred in Egypt, how did the president respond? How did Congress respond? The president and his cohorts in Congress responded by shovelling good money after bad into the failed state of Egypt.”
“The president is intent on building nations abroad and not taking care of our nation here at home,” he said. (T/P09/E1).
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).
