President Obama has invited Egypt's president to the first ever US-Africa Leaders Summit next month despite lingering concerns about the country's human-rights record, Al-Monitor has learned. Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received a written invitation from the US president earlier this week, an Egyptian official said. A US source confirmed that Egypt had been invited, even as the White House continued to publicly assert that it had yet to make up its mind. "They have invited Egypt already," the Egyptian official told Al-Monitor. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations panel on Africa and the driving force behind the summit on Capitol Hill, indicated that inviting the Egyptians would make sense. "I believe they have been," Coons told Al-Monitor in a hallway interview. "My hope is that we will have broad participation from representatives of governments across the continent with whom we have relationships and where we can have constructive conversations about how to move forward." Obama's National Security Council, however, insisted Wednesday that no decision had been made, an indication of how controversial the decision remains. "We are currently reviewing Egypt's participation in the Summit," NSC spokesman Ned Price told Al-Monitor in an email. "Other agencies will have input, which we will, of course, take into account. But given that this is a Presidential Summit, the ultimate decision will rest with the White House." Egypt was one of seven countries excluded from the list of invited African nations when the White House initially announced the summit back in January, following its suspension from the African Union after the military deposed democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi. White House officials insisted at the time that the blacklisting was based solely on its standing with the group of African nations, and last month's decision by the African Union's Peace and Security Council to end the suspension of both Egypt and GuineaBissau all but assured that both would be invited to Obama's summit. The Aug. 4-6 summit is billed as a way for the US to strengthen trade and economic ties with Africa, which has being heavily courted by China and other countries but has received relatively little attention from a US administration focused on its pivot to Asia and crises in the Middle East. The summit will start with a discussion about civil society on Aug. 4 followed by an afternoon in Congress — which won't be in session — hosted by Coons; Obama will host a dinner for all the African presidents on the White House lawn Aug. 5 and an "interactive dialogue" with them on Aug. 6, but is not expected to have any side meetings one-on-one with any of them. That decision has raised eyebrows across Africa and raised the possibility that Sisi and other leaders may send lower-level officials in their stead. "We haven't decided who's going to attend," the Egyptian official told Al-Monitor. "When the host doesn't have bilaterals, it affects the level of participation — that's a given," the source added, making clear that he was speaking generally and not about the Egyptian delegation specifically. Even if Sisi doesn't end up visiting Washington, the invitation is a major win for a government eager to boost its standing on the international stage. "President Sisi would like the international respect and legitimacy that would be conferred upon him by at least a correct relationship with the United States," said Michele Dunne, a senior associate and Egypt expert with the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "I'm sure he would like to be received in Washington as a legitimately elected president and so forth." Sisi's May election has come under criticism for the repression of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood that preceded it and the lack of a serious challenger, and Senate appropriators voted a month later to slash US military aid by $300 million. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the panel that oversees foreign aid spending and the lead critic of Egypt's human-rights record, has not weighed in with the Obama administration to stop Sisi from being invited, Leahy's office told Al-Monitor. Source:Al Monitor
