, the US ambassador to Egypt, spoke with Gamal Essam El-Din following his return from a two-week visit to America What was the purpose of your two-week trip to the US? It was a unique visit. It was about business between Americans and the Arabs in general and business between Americans and Egyptians in particular. Business here means investment and trade. We think Egypt has a good story to tell but it is not understood well in the US. The US Commerce Department began an initiative this year with three American business groups to bring a delegation of American ambassadors serving throughout the Middle East to three of our big business capitals [Los Angeles, Chicago and New York]. Eight of us [in Egypt, Israel, Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Oman] opted to join. We travelled together from Los Angeles where we focussed on the art and entertainment industry and their connections with Arab capital, consumers and investment. Then we went to Chicago where we visited producers of commodity services as well as finance and manufacturing. Then we went to New York where we discovered a range of American business interests in the Arab and Egyptian market. In each of those places we met with business and finance groups and made a lot of interviews on TV and radio. The impression I got from all of these visits is that although these groups are highly sophisticated in terms of business, they were strikingly poorly informed about business conditions, openness to investment, opportunities for investment and even about personal safety. My message to them in speaking about Egypt was that there are great opportunities here not just for American exports, but also for investment. I also told them that it is quite safe to come to Egypt not only as a tourist, but also a businessman. Compared to the US, crime in Egypt is low and the government is very friendly. There is an improving business environment and the Egyptian economy is growing and most importantly the government of Egypt took a turn two and half years ago to open up seriously, to facilitate trade and investment by lowering custom tariffs and make it simpler to get investment information and boost the role of the private sector in economic growth. American businessmen were quite surprised and pleased to hear that message in different forms from each of us. Egypt has oil and gas, the Suez Canal, tourism, and agriculture. In fact Egypt has a mixed economy with lots of advantages but also a very large market -- something like 75 million people whose personal incomes slowly and slowly are rising. Egypt also enjoys political stability. As a result many told me they would like to come and see Egypt by themselves. I want to tell you a story that happened yesterday although I do not want to take the credit for myself. I heard from an investment banker and a lawyer last night at a dinner party that today [Tuesday] there was to be an announcement of the sale of an Egyptian pharmaceutical company [Amoun Pharmaceuticals] to an American investor at a value of $500 million. I was astonished. American investors now seem to see that the local pharmaceutical market is opening up and that there is a lot of profit to be made. That is the best kind of vote of confidence in business in Egypt. It is not a political decision by the United States government. It is a hard- nosed investment decision by someone who wants to get his money back and with a profit. So the American- Egyptian relationship matured long ago. It is not just the ambassadors talking with the ministers and the presidents talking with each other. It is important to have lots of businessmen going back and forth and lots of products being sold back and forth. Our trade relation with Egypt is only $5 billion a year -- about three billion in US exports to Egypt and about two billion in Egyptian exports to the US. That is good but it is trivial when you know that our trade deficit with China is $10 billion a month. But there is a sense here that there are political tensions between the two countries and that this factor is an obstacle to growing relations. It is natural to have differences and still remain friends. We disagreed over Iraq but we agree that we want political stability in Iraq. We want Egypt to be militarily strong, economically and politically stable and this is very important in a troubled region. In this respect we see Egypt differently, for example, from Syria which is a problem state. Besides, we also want to see Egypt economically independent rather than dependent and USAID is working to achieve this goal. USAID's huge investments in Egyptian infrastructure projects (including telephone networks and electricity power grids) are clear evidence of this. We seek to move from aid to trade and also for Egypt to have equal business and trade relations with countries like Russia, China and Turkey. Were you irritated by Trade and Industry Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid's announcement that Egypt aims to make China one of its largest trading partners in the coming 10 years? How do you see those who refuse to invest in Egypt upon the grounds that it does not have a clear scenario for the succession of power? By no means was I bothered about Rachid's announcement. We are living in a globally competitive environment and Egypt must successfully compete. China is an emerging economic powerhouse on the world scene and as you know the US has a huge trade deficit with China. It just bothers me that when families go to Khan Al-Khalili to buy a lantern for Ramadan they find it is made in China. This also happens in my country but with other products. So I am concerned, and every one on the planet is concerned, about the impact of China's low-priced products on working people and their wages. In this global market we cannot protect ourselves. As for the question of succession, some people -- during my US visit -- raised it. They want to know how stable Egypt is and I told them what I believed, that Egypt is very stable. I also told them it is not also how stable Egypt is but also how dynamic. I told them that when the time for succession comes I was confident that Egypt's government and civil society, which is working on reform of the constitution, will not fail and will figure out its own future in a successful way. How do you view Gamal Mubarak's recent attacks against what he called the "New Middle East" and the "Greater Middle East" projects, as well as US funding of Egyptian NGOs? In his speech before the United Nations on 19 September President George Bush made it clear that the US wants to achieve peace in the Middle East. But he also made clear that the US is committed to achieving freedom and democracy throughout the Middle East. We do not have a so-called New Middle East Project. But we think that most Egyptians and Arabs want to have a different future than the present or the past. I meet many young Egyptian people who want tomorrow to be better than today. They want more jobs and more openness politically and more opportunities for women to participate in directing the future. No one wants to be left behind or stuck in the past. You have political parties that oppose change and those that want to go back to a golden age that existed in this part of the world a thousand years ago. Is this what the majority want? We think by espousing democracy you will have a good chance to achieve what you want. It is in this sense we want a new Middle East. On NGOs we will continue on our programmes of supporting them but only in coordination with the government of Egypt and in line with its laws. We never support organisations that seek to undermine Egypt or violate Egyptian law. As for USAID programmes, they are designed to reflect Egyptian priorities for economic development, reforms and governance. As for the Greater Middle East, it is now called Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). It aims to work with private organisations to -- you know -- empower women and business people seeking access to capital and markets. So we do not have projects called either the New Middle East or the Greater Middle East. Egypt wants to lower the Israeli component in the Qualified Industrial Zones agreement from 11 to eight per cent. How do you view this and the chances of concluding a free trade agreement with America? It is up to Egypt and Israel to decide and we have no objection to lowering the Israeli component to eight per cent. As for the FTA with America, this is not a popular matter with the US Congress. We have to wait and see how the Congress will look like after the mid-term elections.
