Mohamed El-Sewedy, the leader of the "Support Egypt" majority bloc in parliament and head of the Federation of Egyptian Industries, told reporters Monday that Egypt's NGO law could be amended only after it goes into implementation. "As we know, the executive regulations of the new NGO law – which was passed by parliament in November 2016 – have not yet been issued and so the law has not gone into implementation," said El-Sewedy in a press conference on the outcome of a visit by an Egyptian parliamentary delegation to Washington last week. The MP said Egypt's new NGO law and US annual economic and military aid to Egypt dominated most of the discussion with leading US Congress members, particularly speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan. "This meeting, which was attended by influential Congress members such as the US House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, was positive because it corrected information on the NGO law among House members who had thought that this law has already gone into implementation," said El-Sewedy, adding that "we also told them that parliament would amend this law if implementation led to negatively affecting the performance of NGOs." "This what Egypt's parliament has previously done with many laws, such as the protest law, which was amended upon the request of the Supreme Constitutional Court," he added. The parliamentarian explained that "the Egyptian parliamentary delegation made it clear to leading congressional officials that the NGO law not only was drafted in line with international conventions, but it was also submitted upon the request of 'the Egyptian street.'" "Egyptian citizens have always wondered how NGOs receive foreign money and how they spend them," said El-Sewedy, adding that "no sovereign government in this world can accept that certain institutions obtain money from abroad without knowing the source of this money and how they spend it." "We told US Congress members that the problem is that NGOs, which used to receive foreign money, don't want to be transparent and don't want to change themselves to go in line with the new law," he said, noting that "there are 49,000 registered NGOs in Egypt and parliament intends to hold meetings with leaders of these NGOs after the law goes into implementation to review their reactions and how it will impact them." El-Sewedy also indicated that US annual economic and military aid to Egypt figured prominently on the Egyptian delegation's visit to Washington. "We told the American side that the way Washington's decision on cutting US economic and military aid to Egypt was issued last August was against Egyptian-American friendship," he explained, adding that "we told them that we reject the language of threats and imposing sanctions because this should not be the language between friends." "We told them we would not accept to be friends of the United States if it decided to resort to the language of threats again," he stated. El-Sewedy also said that the Egyptian delegation voiced objection that the US State Department described the perpetrators of the Western Desert's terrorist attack as members of a militant group. "We told them that this description is very bad because it should be called a terrorist group," said the parliamentarian. El-Sewedy said that in his meeting with US House speaker Paul Ryan, Egypt's parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal proposed the creation of an Egyptian-American parliamentary friendship association to help exchange information between the two houses on issues of mutual concern in a transparent way. "We also extended an invitation to a number of influential members of Congress to visit Egypt in order to take a more realistic view of how Egypt's parliament performs. We know that it is not easy to deal with US Congress members, but I am optimistic that the visit will help correct their positions on Egyptian-American relations," said El-Sewedy, pointing out that "at least they have now become aware that some media outlets publish flawed and unreliable information about internal conditions in Egypt and that they have to contact us to verify this information." He also noted that the delegation's meeting with Senator and former American presidential candidate Ted Cruz covered the issue of whether Muslim Brotherhood should be designated a terrorist organization in the United States. "We thanked him for the law he proposed on this issue, and told him that his draft law on listing Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in the US has become a necessity," said El-Sewedy. El-Sewedy said the visit to Washington further covered various economic issues and Egypt's recent agreement with the IMF. The Egyptian parliamentary delegation's one-week visit to Washington began on 27 October. Led by parliamentary speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, the delegation included El-Sewedy, head of the foreign relations committee Tarek Radwan, head of the budget committee Hussein Eissa, parliament's secretary-general Ahmed Saadeddin, businessman Mohamed El-Sallab, as well as MPs Karim Darwish, Amr Sedki, and Marian Azer.
