Military linkage still forms the cornerstone for US-Egyptian relations, reports Ezzat Ibrahim from Washington Cairo and Washington are both working behind the scenes to reduce frictions in a strategic partnership that dates back Washington's sponsoring the signing of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in the late 1970s. The visit to Cairo earlier this week by General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during which he met with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), was intended to draw a line under deteriorating bilateral relations following legal action against American NGO workers in Cairo. Though Field Marshal Tantawi stressed the importance of maintaining strong ties with the US in a meeting with the cabinet American officials are worried not only about the NGO case but fear a wider backlash. Six out of the accused 19 American activists and employees, include Sam LaHood, son of US Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, are banned from travel, and no date has yet been set for their trial, the rest had already fled the country. Meanwhile, some members of Congress are threatening to cut the $1.3 billion of annual aid to Egypt if the case is not resolved. In a statement to the press on his way back from Cairo General Dempsey said: "I expressed the fact that it caused US concern, not only about the particular NGOs and individuals currently unable to leave the country, but rather more broadly." Dempsey asked Egypt's military leaders: "What signal should I take from this in terms of how you see Egypt's future? Are you going to become isolated? Are you going to preserve individual freedoms or deny them?" He noted that, "they don't have the answers right now." Dempsey also expressed the Defense Department's commitment to promoting common US-Egyptian interests. Senior American officials confirmed that they found the Egyptian military "eager" to get out of the country-running business. In his annual budget proposals to Congress President Barack Obama asked that annual military aid to Egypt be maintained at $1.3 billion and sought $250 million in economic aid. The administration "is expressing outrage while engaging in complex negotiations to release American citizens" wrote Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. "It is attempting to apply immediate pressure while preserving some medium-term influence. This calibration is easy to criticise. It is harder to perform." Talks between Egyptian and American officials to solve the NGO crisis have continued in both Cairo and Washington. According to Washington sources Obama's team is worried that the situation in Egypt and other Arab countries could work against US interests ahead of the presidential campaign. "Does the administration have a coherent Middle East policy?" asked Council on Foreign Relations member Elliot Abrams at last week's annual conference of the Conservative Political Action Conference. Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the council, told Al-Ahram Weekly "we have not had a coherent approach to post-Mubarak Egypt because it is all rather confusing to the United States". "There was a debate on how much emphasis we put on SCAF or how much we reach out, and how much we get involved to promote democratic change. I think we have been caught because we have aspirations to have a democratic Egypt but our primary interlocutors have been the military." "I do not think anybody in Washington considers them a progressive force for democratisation, but that is who is in charge and we have interests in the region that we want to safeguard." "The relationship, even before the uprising, was increasingly outmoded. The bases for the relationship included the Soviet Union, maintaining peace with Israel, and ensuring regional stability and even broadening the circle of peace between Israel and its neighbours. They are not as important in the first decade of the 21st century as they were before. We should either have a new rationale or oversee a change in the relationship that is healthy for both countries. We should not talk necessarily about strategic alignment because there may be no such alignment in the future." But Egypt's generals, wrote the Associated Press, "may be betting the US cannot afford to cut relations with Egypt -- a cornerstone of American MidEast policy". "The ruling military council may also fear it has much more than foreign aid to lose if it fully embraces a democratic transition that could bring civilian oversight of its substantial financial assets and curb its long- standing domination of politics."
