American and Egyptian politicians and academics said that Barack Obama reaching the presidency is an historic event for the United States that would end the 9/11 mentality and begin a new era of liberal thought. In the Annual Conference of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs yesterday, those experts said that relations between Cairo and Washington would improve under Obama's administration. They also said that the global financial crisis and the domestic economic situation in the United States would be the priorities of the president-elect. Professor of Political Science Ali Eddin Hilal said Egyptian-American relations are solid and multi-dimensional. He attributed the causes of tension in the relations to the emergence of a new element to the traditional problem of Israel, namely human rights.
He said that Obama's change would be internally rather than externally, but this would not prevent the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq so as to concentrate on the war against terrorism and the Iranian threat, which Dr. Abdel Moneim Said, director of Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, agreed with. Mohamed Kamal, member of the National Democratic Party's Policy Committee, said Obama has a realistic vision of the world as not being perfect or rosy, noting that the new administration will get rid of the programs associated with the Bush administration.
