diff --git "a/data/CHRG-112/CHRG-112hhrg64483.txt" "b/data/CHRG-112/CHRG-112hhrg64483.txt"
new file mode 100644--- /dev/null
+++ "b/data/CHRG-112/CHRG-112hhrg64483.txt"
@@ -0,0 +1,4927 @@
+
+ - RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EGYPT AND LEBANON: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY AND ALLIES IN THE BROADER MIDDLE EAST, PART 1
+
+[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
+[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
+
+
+
+
+
+ RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EGYPT AND
+ LEBANON: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY AND
+ ALLIES IN THE BROADER MIDDLE EAST
+
+=======================================================================
+
+ HEARINGS
+
+ BEFORE THE
+
+ COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
+ HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
+
+ ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
+
+ FIRST SESSION
+
+ __________
+
+ FEBRUARY 9 AND 10, 2011
+
+ __________
+
+ Serial No. 112-32
+
+ __________
+
+ Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/
+
+ ______
+
+
+ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
+ 64-483PDF WASHINGTON : 2011
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
+Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC
+area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC
+20402-0001
+
+
+
+
+
+ COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
+
+ ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman
+CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
+DAN BURTON, Indiana GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
+ELTON GALLEGLY, California ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American
+DANA ROHRABACHER, California Samoa
+DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
+EDWARD R. ROYCE, California BRAD SHERMAN, California
+STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
+RON PAUL, Texas GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
+MIKE PENCE, Indiana RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
+JOE WILSON, South Carolina ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
+CONNIE MACK, Florida GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
+JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
+MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas DENNIS CARDOZA, California
+TED POE, Texas BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
+GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
+JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
+BILL JOHNSON, Ohio CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
+DAVID RIVERA, Florida FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
+MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania KAREN BASS, California
+TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
+TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
+JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
+ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York
+RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina
+VACANT
+ Yleem D.S. Poblete, Staff Director
+ Richard J. Kessler, Democratic Staff Director
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ C O N T E N T S
+
+ ----------
+ Page
+
+Part 1, February 9, 2011......................................... 1
+Part 2, February 10, 2011........................................ 67
+
+ WITNESSES
+ February 9
+
+The Honorable Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern
+ studies, Council on Foreign Relations.......................... 10
+The Honorable Lorne Craner, president, International Republican
+ Institute (former assistant secretary of state for democracy,
+ human rights, and labor)....................................... 17
+Robert Satloff, Ph.D., executive director, The Washington
+ Institute for Near East Policy................................. 26
+
+ February 10
+
+The Honorable James B. Steinberg, Deputy Secretary, U.S.
+ Department of State............................................ 77
+
+ LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
+ February 9
+
+The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Representative in Congress
+ from the State of Florida, and chairman, Committee on Foreign
+ Affairs: Prepared statements
+ February 9..................................................... 4
+ February 10.................................................... 70
+The Honorable Elliott Abrams: Prepared statement................. 12
+The Honorable Lorne Craner: Prepared statement................... 19
+Robert Satloff, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................ 28
+
+ February 10
+
+The Honorable James B. Steinberg: Prepared statement............. 79
+
+ APPENDIX
+ February 9
+
+Hearing notice................................................... 120
+Hearing minutes.................................................. 121
+The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
+ from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 123
+The Honorable Howard L. Berman, a Representative in Congress from
+ the State of California: IFES Briefing Paper entitled
+ ``Elections in Egypt: Key Challenges for Credible and
+ Competitive Elections''........................................ 124
+
+ February 10
+
+Hearing notice................................................... 132
+Hearing minutes.................................................. 133
+The Honorable Russ Carnahan, a Representative in Congress from
+ the State of Missouri: Prepared statement...................... 135
+The Honorable Joe Wilson, a Representative in Congress from the
+ State of South Carolina: Prepared statement.................... 136
+Written responses from the Honorable James B. Steinberg to
+ questions submitted for the record by the Honorable Ileana Ros-
+ Lehtinen....................................................... 137
+Written responses from the Honorable James B. Steinberg to
+ questions submitted for the record by the Honorable Russ
+ Carnahan, a Representative in Congress from the State of
+ Missouri....................................................... 155
+
+
+RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EGYPT AND LEBANON: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY
+ AND ALLIES IN THE BROADER MIDDLE EAST, PART 1
+
+ ----------
+
+
+ WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2011
+
+ House of Representatives,
+ Committee on Foreign Affairs,
+ Washington, DC.
+ The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:25 a.m., in
+room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana Ros-
+Lehtinen (chairman of the committee) presiding.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. The committee will come to order.
+Having been duly organized, this committee will now proceed to
+our first official hearing of the 112th Congress. After
+recognizing myself and the ranking member, Mr. Berman, for 7
+minutes each for our opening statements, I will recognize the
+chairman and ranking member of our Subcommittee on the Middle
+East and South Asia for 3\1/2\ minutes each for their
+statements. We will then proceed directly to hear testimony
+from our distinguished witnesses, and I would respectfully
+remind them to keep their statements to no longer than 5
+minutes. I am rather ruthless with this gavel. After we hear
+from our witnesses, individual members will be recognized for 5
+minutes each to question our witnesses. The Chair now
+recognizes herself for 7 minutes.
+ Recent developments in Egypt and Lebanon pose great
+challenges to U.S. policy, to our interest and to our allies in
+the Middle East. In Lebanon we have witnessed the takeover of
+the country by the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. In Egypt we see
+destabilization of a government which has been a key U.S. ally
+and partner for over 3 decades. In both instances, successive
+U.S. administrations failed to develop and implement a longer
+term strategy to move beyond the status quo and prepare for the
+future.
+ In both Egypt and Lebanon we have failed to effectively
+leverage U.S. assistance in support of peaceful, pro-democracy
+forces, and to help build strong, accountable, independent,
+democratic institutions as a bulwark against the instability
+that is now spreading throughout much of the region. Instead of
+being proactive, we have been obsessed with maintaining short-
+term, personality-based stability, stability that was never
+really all that stable, as the events of recent weeks
+demonstrate. Successive administrations have repeatedly opposed
+and obstructed efforts by Members of Congress to require
+accountability and ensuring Egypt met conditions for its
+economic assistance.
+ The Mubarak government has been a reliable and valuable
+ally of the United States on security matters, but the
+relationship must extend well beyond Mubarak. It would be
+short-sighted and potentially dangerous for the United States
+to base its entire approach to another nation on the survival
+of one individual.
+ In the early days of the current unrest the administration
+failed to seize the opportunity to press for reform, to address
+the demonstrators' frustrations and prevent chaos and violence.
+ On January 25th, the first day of the demonstrations,
+Secretary Clinton stated, ``Our assessment is that the Egyptian
+Government is stable.'' Vice President Joe Biden, in an
+interview on January 27th, said, ``I would not refer to Mubarak
+as a dictator.''
+ According to the Wall Street Journal, National Security
+Council officials admitted in a meeting on January 31 that they
+did not have a contingency plan in place should the Egyptian
+Government collapse. Now the White House is reportedly making
+matters worse by not only reexamining its position on dealing
+with the Muslim Brotherhood, but also stated that a new
+Egyptian Government should ``include a whole host of important
+non-secular actors.'' The Muslim Brotherhood had nothing to do
+with driving the protests, and they and other extremists must
+not be allowed to hijack the movement toward democracy and
+freedom in Egypt.
+ Turning to Lebanon, we are again confronted by the absence
+of a long-term U.S. strategy. Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah have
+acted relentlessly to undermine Lebanon's sovereignty and the
+United States has largely adopted a reactive posture seeking to
+contain the advance of these hostile forces. Washington has
+also persisted in continuing to provide assistance to a
+Lebanese Government in which Hezbollah essentially had veto
+power. This included security assistance to the Lebanese Armed
+Forces, LAF, despite longstanding concerns over whether such
+aid could directly or indirectly benefit Hezbollah.
+ Even now when the Lebanese Government has been overthrown,
+the United States has still failed to indicate that it will cut
+off assistance to a proxy government for Iran, Syria, and
+Hezbollah.
+ There are lessons from the Lebanon debacle which are
+applicable to Egypt. In Lebanon, following the Hariri
+assassination, elections were immediately held under Syrian-
+inspired electoral law, laying the foundation for the political
+empowerment of Hezbollah. Therefore, shouldn't the United
+States insist that constitutional and administrative
+requirements concerning the electoral process in Egypt be
+revised to ensure that only responsible actors who meet certain
+basic standards participate in Egypt's future? Such criteria
+should include renouncing violent extremism, upholding the rule
+of law, recognizing and enforcing Egypt's international
+commitments, including its nonproliferation obligation and its
+peace agreement with the Jewish State of Israel.
+ I would greatly appreciate if our witnesses this morning
+would address the following questions in their testimony: Can
+there be stability in Egypt if Mubarak remains in power? Do
+conditions enable a military control transition process? Would
+this buy time for legitimate opposition forces to organize and
+for constitutional modifications to take place? There are some
+who have suggested that Egypt could follow a Turkey model. How
+viable is that comparison? Given that patterns have recently
+developed in Turkey, could Egypt's adoption of this model lead
+to possible threats to U.S. interests and allies in the Middle
+East? Can the legitimate opposition assume a leadership role?
+Can the military transition to the civil arena? What changes in
+the Egyptian Constitution would be necessary to ensure that
+candidates for public office for political leaders are going to
+act and govern democratically? What criteria are necessary to
+ensure that radical Islamists are not empowered?
+ And beyond Egypt and Lebanon the United States must have
+broader strategic plan for the region so that our interests and
+our allies are protected and destructive regimes in Tehran and
+Damascus and other extremists are unable to exert their
+influence over people yearning for democracy.
+ These questions are particularly relevant as we commemorate
+the centennial of the birth of President Ronald Reagan. During
+his Westminster address Reagan stated, ``Any system is
+inherently unstable that has no peaceful means to legitimize
+its leaders. While we must be cautious about forcing the pace
+of change, we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate
+objective and to take concrete actions to move toward them. The
+objective I propose,'' according to Ronald Reagan, ``is quite
+simple to state: To foster the infrastructure of democracy.''
+ We face an emergency in Lebanon and Egypt that could spread
+to the broader Middle East. With cautious determination, we
+thank our esteemed witnesses for appearing before our committee
+today and look forward to their testimony.
+ With that, I am pleased to yield to our ranking member, Mr.
+Berman.
+ [The prepared statement of Chairman Ros-Lehtinen follows:]
+
+
+
+
+ Mr. Berman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. This hearing could
+not be more important or timely. The events of the past month
+across the Middle East have come at a head spinning pace. They
+are both exciting and daunting. A new dawn is breaking for the
+people of Egypt. The promise of a democratic transition brings
+with it new opportunities and freedoms. However, with this
+change comes uncertainty for our security and the security of
+our close ally, Israel. We must both ensure that the transition
+proceeds and seek to ensure that our shared interests are not
+compromised.
+ When strongman Ben Ali fled Tunisia on January 14th, few
+guessed that the next country to be intoxicated by the Arab
+world's growing embrace of freedom would be Egypt, the long-
+time cornerstone of U.S. strategy and peacemaking in the Middle
+East. We had worried about Egypt's income gap, its illiteracy,
+its poverty, its denial of fundamental human rights. We had
+debated leadership succession issues as President Mubarak's
+health faltered, and we knew Egyptians, who often seemed to
+endure the unbearable and do so with good humor, have a history
+of rising up every other generation or so. But we never guessed
+that the next Egyptian revolution would begin in Tunis.
+ The mass demonstrations in Cairo have already produced
+stunning results: The decision that neither Hosni Mubarak nor
+his son Gamal nor Omar Suleiman will run for President in
+September. They have also instigated talks on the future of
+Egypt between the government and various parties, including the
+Muslim Brotherhood, a moment which has formally been banned
+from politics in Egypt since its founding in 1928.
+ Hosni Mubarak has been a friend of the United States,
+however flawed. We didn't put the Mubarak government in power,
+but we supported it because it pursued regional policies we
+generally supported. And with our large foreign assistance we
+incentivized it to pursue those policies.
+ While we can't determine Egypt's future leader, we should
+use our influence to encourage a process of change that is
+orderly and a government whose foreign and security policies
+support our interests. As this change takes hold, we must keep
+firmly in mind that our goals include an Egypt that supports
+close relations with the United States, supports the welfare of
+the Egyptian people, democracy, universal human rights, is
+secular in orientation, and of course adheres to the peace
+treaty with Israel.
+ In any transition the military will play a critical role,
+as it is already doing. That is why I think it is important
+that our military assistance program continue, so as long as,
+and only if, the military is playing a constructive role in
+bringing about a democratic transition. Based on their
+writings, I know there is disagreement among the panelists on
+this issue, and I look forward to the discussion.
+ Egypt has long needed a more inclusive government,
+responsive to the desires of its citizens. If a stable
+democracy is to emerge, there must be participation by a wide
+array of political forces that are fully committed to
+democratic principles. Like many, however, I am skeptical about
+the Muslim Brotherhood's commitment to democracy. The
+Brotherhood wants Egypt to be governed by religious law rather
+than man-made law, a problematic position for a democrat. It
+has a bloody history and even after it renounced violence and
+endorsed democracy in the 1970s, some of its alumni joined the
+ranks of the world's most notorious murderers. Included in
+those ranks are Sadat's assassins and al-Qaeda's Ayman al-
+Zawahiri.
+ Some Egyptians of impeccable democratic credentials say the
+Brotherhood has changed and that it is now truly democratic in
+its approach. But even if that is true, we shouldn't fool
+ourselves. Even in the best case scenario where the Brotherhood
+proves itself fully committed to democracy, there is every
+reason to believe it will try to influence the Egyptian
+Government in ways that undermine U.S. interests and it will
+make Egypt a regressive and less tolerant place.
+ Mubarak has already made clear that his presidency will end
+in September and that his son Gamal will not succeed him. It is
+critical that Egyptians agree as soon as possible on relevant
+constitutional amendments and laws and a clear and certain
+timetable for their implementation if free and fair elections
+are to be held in September. The less time that the opposition
+has to prepare for elections, the more likely it is that the
+next President will be determined either by Mubarak's National
+Democratic Party or by the Muslim Brotherhood, by far the two
+most organized political forces as of now.
+ I would like to say a few words about Lebanon, where a
+handpicked Hezbollah candidate is on the verge of becoming
+Prime Minister. It is a very troubling example of how
+democratic development can go off the tracks when a party
+doesn't respect democratic ground rules. Hezbollah's
+parliamentary faction is but a political front for a cut-throat
+militia. And more than anything else that has put the terrorist
+group in the political driver's seat. If you don't believe me,
+ask Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader who left Saad Hariri's
+March 14th Movement and threw his support to Hezbollah. It is
+an all but open secret that he did so in physical fear of
+Hezbollah.
+ As Hezbollah gradually assumes control over more of the
+levers of power in Lebanon, we must be both wise and firm in
+our response. I will be introducing legislation called the
+Hezbollah Anti-Terrorism Act. Following on the Palestinian
+Anti-Terrorist Act, which passed Congress following Hamas'
+election to leadership in the PA in 2006, my bill will set
+rigorous requirements for the provision of foreign assistance
+to Lebanon during periods where Hezbollah is part of the
+Lebanese Government. The goal will be to ensure that none of
+our assistance to Lebanon benefits Hezbollah in any way. We
+certainly want to assist our friends in Lebanon, and we will.
+But we also want to make sure that we don't inadvertently help
+our enemies at the same time. My legislation leaves ample scope
+for both.
+ I look forward to the testimony of our three witnesses and
+particularly their views on how the United States can encourage
+a responsible democratic transition in Egypt on the goals I
+previously laid out, what the chances are that such a
+transition will occur, and what they foresee is the role of the
+Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt during that transition and beyond.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. I thank my good friend for his
+remarks, and now I will recognize Mr. Chabot for 3\1/2\
+minutes. He is the chairman on the Subcommittee on the Middle
+East and South Asia.
+ Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chairman. So we can get to the
+witnesses sooner I will not take the full 3 minutes. I will be
+very brief. I want to thank you for holding these very timely
+hearings this morning, and I know we all look forward to
+hearing from this very distinguished panel of witnesses.
+ When I was recently appointed chairman of the Middle East
+and South Asia Subcommittee, having served on the subcommittee
+for a number of years, I knew we would be dealing with a host
+of important issues in a critical part of the world. I don't
+know that anyone, however, anticipated that we would be
+confronted with so many developments in the region quite so
+quickly, not just in Egypt and Lebanon, which we will be
+focusing on in the next 2 days, but in Tunisia and throughout
+the broader region. Clearly in the case of Egypt we have come
+to a crossroads. And while we do not yet know how the current
+volatile situation in that nation will play out, I think we all
+realize that we are going to have to reassess our bilateral
+relationship not only in terms of diplomacy but in the area of
+economic assistance as well.
+ The current situation, however, is not limited, as I
+mentioned before, to Egypt. The widespread protests throughout
+numerous countries in the region raise broader concerns
+regarding U.S. foreign policy more generally as well as how we
+administer foreign aid.
+ I look forward to being involved in these important
+discussions as we move ahead both here and in the full
+committee with you, Madam Chair, and in the subcommittee, both
+of which I am sure will be quite busy.
+ So we can get to the witnesses, as I mentioned before, I am
+going to yield back the balance of my time.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Chabot. Now I would
+now like to recognize Mr. Ackerman, the ranking member of the
+Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, for 3\1/2\
+minutes.
+ Mr. Ackerman. Thank you and congratulations, Madam Chair.
+ In Egypt I fear we are snatching failure from the jaws of
+success. After progressively escalating pressure on President
+Mubarak, after rejecting regime-backed violence against
+peaceful protests, after denouncing the regime's assault on
+journalists, after carefully positioning the United States on
+the side of the protesters, the Obama administration now
+appears to be wavering on whether America really backs the
+demands of the Egyptian people or just wants to return to
+stability with a facade of change.
+ The contradiction that is forming between the
+administration's rhetoric and its policy concerns the so-called
+national dialogue initiated by Egypt's new Vice President,
+General Omar Suleiman. General Suleiman is a strong, serious,
+and capable man, but it is still unclear whether his job is to
+lead Egypt's transition on behalf of the Egyptian people or to
+delay it, sidetrack it, flim-flam it into irrelevance on the
+part of President Mubarak.
+ The major items on the Egyptian reform agenda are well-
+known: An end to restrictions on free speech and free press, an
+end to restrictions on the formation and operation of political
+parties, an end to the constantly abused emergency law, and an
+end to structural impediments to free and fair elections.
+ What have the Egyptian people seen so far? A dialogue with
+the opposition that excludes major opposition leaders but does
+include regime allies, a proposed committee to report on the
+reforms that the government has no obligation to adopt or even
+consider, a promise to lift the state of emergency when the
+government considers that it is appropriate, a pledge to
+liberalize media and communication without any definition of
+what constitutes liberalization.
+ The Secretary of State, to her credit, insists that with
+regard to the General Suleiman-led dialogue ``the people
+themselves and the leaders of various groups within Egyptian
+society will ultimately determine whether it is or is not
+meeting their needs,'' she warns. ``We are going to wait and
+see,'' she says, ``how this develops but we have been very
+clear about what we expect.'' I wish we were that clear.
+ Respecting Egyptian sovereignty is one thing, maintaining a
+level of ambiguity so thick that ordinary Egyptians cannot
+discern whether or not we are on their side is something else
+altogether. Our national security interests require much
+greater clarity. The people yearn to be free.
+ How refreshing is it to see people who are not trampling
+our flag in the streets as they raise theirs? How inspiring is
+it to see people in that part of the world ready to die for
+their children's future instead of sending their children off
+to die? The people yearn to be free. We must plant ourselves
+firmly on their side.
+ Until there is evidence that a real transition is underway,
+with the exception of aid for humanitarian needs or with the
+transition, we need to suspend our aid to Egypt. We simply
+cannot afford to be viewed in Egypt as the bank-rollers of
+repression. The people yearn to be free.
+ I cannot help but muse if Charlton Heston were to be
+appointed the Special Envoy to Egypt, he would stand there
+speaking softly with a big stick in hand and say to President
+Mubarak, ``Your people have let you go.''
+ Thank you, Madam chair.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Ackerman.
+ In the interest of time and since our witnesses are well-
+known in their field, I will refrain from the lengthier bios
+and will proceed immediately to recognize Elliott Abrams,
+senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former
+deputy national security adviser, for his remarks.
+ Elliot will be following by Lorne Craner, president of the
+International Republican Institute and former assistant
+secretary of state for democracy human Rights and labor. And
+rounding off our distinguished panel is Dr. Robert Satloff, who
+is the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near
+East Policy.
+ Mr. Abrams, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
+
+ STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ELLIOTT ABRAMS, SENIOR FELLOW FOR
+ MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
+
+ Mr. Abrams. Thank you, Madam Chairman and members of the
+committee. It is a privilege and an honor to testify at this
+first Foreign Affairs Committee hearing of the new Congress,
+and it is a pleasure to return to this room where I first
+testified to this committee 30 years ago under, if I remember
+right, Chairman Zablocki's chairmanship, your predecessor here.
+ There is enough ground here for about a dozen hearings, but
+I want to try to make six points this morning, and I would ask
+that my full statement be submitted for the record.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Without objection, they all will.
+Thank you.
+ Mr. Abrams. First, the uprisings we have seen in Tunisia
+and Egypt are exciting proof that the thirst for freedom is
+indeed universal. The Middle East has lagged behind the rest of
+the world in moving toward democracy. There has been a freedom
+deficit.
+ President Bush was right when he adopted a freedom agenda
+for the Middle East. He asked in 2003, ``Are the peoples of the
+Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions
+of men and women and children condemned by history or culture
+to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom,
+never even to have a choice in the matter?'' And he gave the
+answer, ``Sixty years of Western nations excusing and
+accommodating lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to
+make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be
+purchased at the expense of liberty.''
+ Supporting freedom is our best policy in the Middle East as
+it is in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and everywhere else.
+Dictators, Presidents for life, stolen elections, government-
+controlled press are all a formula for instability. And we can
+just see in Egypt, after 30 years of Hosni Mubarak, in fact
+there is great instability and the Muslim Brotherhood is
+stronger than ever.
+ Second point, American policy in the region should
+accordingly favor democracy and countries that are moving
+toward reform. This means one building block for us should be
+our alliance with Israel, the region's only established
+democracy. We should value and enhance our relations with
+countries such as Jordan and Morocco where reform efforts are
+underway.
+ It means that warming up to Syria sends exactly the wrong
+message, that we don't care about human rights and democracy.
+We don't even care when a country is very hostile to the United
+States. That we sent an ambassador to Syria at exactly the
+moment when Hezbollah is taking over the Government of Lebanon
+sends the wrong message. We must actively press for democracy,
+not only in Tunisia and Egypt, but in Iran and Syria as well.
+Democracy promotion cannot be a policy applied to American
+allies while America's enemies are forgotten.
+ Third, the events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria and
+several other countries should persuade us once and for all
+that the linkage argument, that every problem in the Middle
+East is really tied to the Israeli-Palestinian, is false. None
+of those events had to do anything with Israel and the
+Palestinians.
+ Fourth, we should use our assistance program, as you said,
+Madam Chairman, to promote democracy. There is often a
+disconnect. I think we should make clear to Egypt's military
+right now that the $1 billion a year they get is not owed to
+them. Their conduct will determine how much aid they get.
+ The late Tom Lantos used to ask, ``What do you think Egypt
+actually needs, more tanks or more schools?'' And I think it is
+a question we need to ask today. If the Egyptian military
+blocks reform and democracy in Egypt, those aid dollars can be
+better spent in countries where the military in supporting
+progress.
+ Fifth point, this aid question applies to Lebanon as well,
+and I would make the same point about our aid to the Lebanese
+military. If they are in fact fighting terrorism and guarding
+the border with Syria, then they should get our help, but if
+they are not, then that aid it seems to me should be suspended.
+It should be conditional, as in Egypt, on the actual
+performance of the military.
+ Finally, how do we support democracy? I urge the committee
+to take a look at the National Endowment for Democracy, for the
+State Department and USAID programs, to the broadcasting that
+we do to see if we can do better and leverage the money that we
+spend more effectively.
+ I will stop there, Madam Chairman. We have a number of
+speakers, and I look forward to your questions, and thank you
+again for inviting me here today.
+ [The prepared statement of Mr. Abrams follows:]
+
+
+
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Abrams. Now
+we are pleased to recognize Mr. Craner for 5 minutes.
+
+ STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LORNE CRANER, PRESIDENT,
+INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE (FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY
+ OF STATE FOR DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR)
+
+ Mr. Craner. Chairman, Congressman Berman, members of the
+committee, thanks for the opportunity to testify today,
+especially at your first hearing.
+ As has occurred all too often in the past, the United
+States today stands surprised by foreign revolutions. These
+events will have consequences for the region and, as I will
+argue later, further afield. Although a single wave of reform
+is unlikely, the spread of technology means citizens in Arab
+countries are no longer isolated. Most importantly, especially
+after events in Egypt, the historic center of the Middle East,
+any popular belief that the Arab regimes are too powerful to be
+overthrown should be ending.
+ In the region subtle national differences means events will
+take on uniquely local flavors in each country. That said, we
+can categorize the region's nations helps in a way that helps
+us determine which may be the most problematic.
+Counterintuitively, problematic consequences are less likely in
+most of the regions monarchies than in the republics. Beginning
+about 15 years ago almost all the regions monarchies, mostly
+young kings who had been educated abroad, to one degree or
+another began to modernize their countries economically and
+politically.
+ A second reason we are less likely to see consequences in
+monarchies is that they all project greater legitimacy by
+virtue of their hereditary, often tribal lineage. In
+combination with the nascent liberalization, this enables them
+to deflect economic and political complaints to new governing
+institutions. This is what we are seeing today in Jordan and
+Kuwait, where the object of protestors' ire is the Prime
+Minister and the government.
+ It will be important for the region's monarchies to be able
+to show continued progress in opening up their political and
+economic systems. It is worrisome, for example, that some of
+the Gulf countries has slowed reforms or even backtracked the
+last few years, and of course reforms in Saudi Arabia have been
+so glacial as to make an exception to this rule.
+ It is the region's republics that will be most affected by
+recent events. They are run by men who at best have rigged
+elections and now have decreasingly credible claims to
+leadership. The fate of these leaders is more directly
+dependent on their performance, which for most has been sorely
+lacking. The leaders have stalled economic and political
+reforms for decades, and we have already seen demonstrations in
+Yemen, a country run not unlike Egypt but with less stability
+and a serious al-Qaeda element.
+ Clearly Israel, which had regarded its security threatened
+more by Iran than by countries with which it shared borders,
+will have to recalculate, and our closest ally in the region
+will require much reassurance and support from Washington.
+ When I testified last June before this committee, I noted
+that the administration had not yet begun to implement a
+strategy to advance democracy abroad because it had to
+strategy. Since that time the beginnings of a strategy have
+been rolled out by Secretary Clinton in Krakow and by President
+Obama at the UNGA meeting. The administration is focusing
+democracy work on supportive civil society organizations
+working to achieve change from the bottom up, and Secretary
+Clinton deserves great credit for conceiving and then
+enunciating this policy.
+ Despite these pronouncements, however, implementation lags.
+In Egypt, for example, the administration had responded to
+building pressure, not with increased support to civil society.
+Instead, it agreed to the Mubarak government demands for
+signoff on all USAID funded democracy assistance, which
+obviously precluded programmatic support to many of the NGOs
+that represent moderate secular interests committed to reform.
+This played into a decades-long dynamic that made the United
+States choose between Mubarak and the Brotherhood.
+ U.S. democracy assistance to Jordan and Lebanon exhibits
+many of the same failings. IRI and our sister organization,
+NDI, constantly struggle to convince USAID of the value of
+assisting Jordan's fledgling political parties resulting in
+minimal assistance. In Lebanon, even as the United States
+pulled closer to Syria, our political party programming for
+March 14th coalition parties, the only counterweight to
+Hezbollah, was cut short.
+ Now this failure to cultivate the generation of democratic
+leaders is not new. It was not until the Musharraf regime began
+to crumble in 2007 that the Bush administration scrambled to
+determine who might succeed him and establish relations with
+Pakistani figures they thought would help advance American
+interests. But this case was notable more as an exception. In
+places like Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan the U.S.
+Government had acidulously cultivated democratic successors.
+ The Obama administration has already faced this issue in
+Kyrgyzstan last April. As the increasingly authoritarian
+government crumbled, dissidents outside complained that our
+Embassy had refused to meet them for months or years, and we
+feared the loss of our base at Manas. Realism valuing stability
+in our relations abroad gained currency after Iraq, but being
+so closely tied to authoritarians does not serve U.S. interests
+when a repressive government fails. As we are learning yet
+again, when we necessarily have relations with authoritarian
+governments we must plan for the day when they are no longer in
+power.
+ [The prepared statement of Mr. Craner follows:]
+
+
+
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Craner. Thank you.
+ Pleased to yield to Mr. Satloff. For 5 minutes.
+
+ STATEMENT OF ROBERT SATLOFF, PH.D., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE
+ WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY
+
+ Mr. Satloff. Madam Chairman, thank you for the opportunity
+today. Yours has been a principled voice in support of
+democracy in Egypt and abroad, and I know that the people in
+Egypt and American interests are better for it. Also, Mr.
+Berman, I would like to congratulate you for your stalwart
+support for change and reform. I had the privilege of escorting
+Mr. Berman to the home of a prominent dissident in Cairo
+several years ago, and I know that had tremors throughout the
+regime. And if I may, would like to congratulate my hometown
+neighbor, Mr. Cicilline, on his election on joining this
+committee.
+ To note the obvious, the events in Egypt have enormous
+implications for America's interests and role in the Middle
+East. For now a sober assessment for the Egyptian situation
+leads one to conclude that it is neither the disaster some fear
+nor the dawn of a new day that some hope. That story is not yet
+written. We can affect it only on the margins; it is of course
+the Egyptian people's decision to affect it most of all.
+ In its handling of specifics of the Egypt crisis, my
+assessment is that President Obama and his advisers have
+generally adopted a sound approach. This is of course an
+evolving situation. Still the administration recognized early
+on that it was neither wise nor possible for the United States
+to back regime suppression of democracy protestors and that it
+did not serve U.S. interests to have its relationship with
+Egypt personalized by identification with an unflagging support
+for President Mubarak. Instead the administration correctly
+supported the idea of change and the democratic spirit at the
+heart of the protests while operating on the basis of the not
+unreasonable assessment that the Egyptian military was and
+perhaps remains the key to resolving a national crisis that pit
+millions of protesters against an increasingly isolated and
+stubborn President. Hence, the administration's belief, a
+rational belief but still unproven on the ground, that the
+military could be the agent of positive change. As I said, that
+change has not yet happened.
+ For all the drama of the past 2 weeks, the regime has so
+far acceded to no major substantive or irrevocable change.
+Indeed, in some areas, the appointment of military men as Vice
+President and Prime Minister without clear and irrevocable
+decisions on the emergency law or other major changes in the
+Egyptian political system, there has been regression.
+ Every day that passes in which the military does not
+definitively break from President Mubarak implicates them with
+the regime, which is bad for our interests, and every day that
+passes without that break further erodes an already weakened
+U.S. regional image. If the new leadership does show itself to
+be serious about lifting the emergency law, releasing prisoners
+and implementing constitutional, legal and administrative
+changes, this may suffice to launch Egypt on the path of
+orderly, peaceful, democratic reform. In this context I support
+the maintenance of U.S. aid and align myself with Mr. Berman's
+comment earlier.
+ However, in my view United States needs to avoid being in
+the worst of possible situations; namely, a situation in which
+it is perceived to have broken with President Mubarak, which is
+what most of our allies fear is the case. But then to have
+President Mubarak still survive in the face of this only erodes
+the image of U.S. influence. Neither feared nor respected nor
+loved is not a healthy situation for American interests.
+ As we approach the transitional period, I do believe deep
+concern should be expressed about the Muslim Brotherhood. The
+Brotherhood is not, as some suggest, simply an Egyptian version
+of the March of Dimes--that is, a social welfare organization
+whose goals are fundamentally humanitarian; it is a political
+organization that seeks to reorder Egyptian society in larger
+Muslim societies in an Islamist fashion. The Brotherhood will
+exploit whatever opportunities it is presented with. It has
+renounced its most ambiguous goals only as a result of regime
+compulsion, not by free choice.
+ Therefore, we should express extreme caution in advocating
+for specific reforms that could advantage the Brotherhood at
+the expense of non-Islamist political parties. It would run
+counter to U.S. interests for the United States to advocate,
+for example, in favor of constitutional amendments to lift the
+prohibition of parties based on religion. Should Egyptians opt
+for such a change, that is their choice, but it is not in our
+interest to advance those parties at the expense of liberal or
+anti-Islamist parties.
+ Two very specific ideas in the meantime: I urge you to
+discuss with the administration the idea of redirecting an
+appropriate sum to humanitarian and medical assistance to
+assist the thousands of Egyptians that have been hurt, injured,
+or suffered as a result of this oppression of the protests. And
+second, I hope that the administration is working closely with
+NDI and IRI on planning for massive engagement during the
+transition process.
+ Madam Chairman, I have a series of telegraphic
+prescriptions on regional issues that are in my written
+testimony about strengthening partnerships, about promoting
+sustained efforts of reform, about directing the winds of
+change elsewhere, and they are in the testimony for your
+review.
+ [The prepared statement of Mr. Satloff follows:]
+
+
+
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. We will read those. Thank
+you, Dr. Satloff. And thank you to all of our witnesses for
+excellent testimony.
+ I would like to yield my 5 minutes of questioning to
+freshman Congresswoman Renee Ellmers of North Carolina. She is
+recognized for 5 minutes.
+ Mrs. Ellmers. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
+ Dr. Satloff, in your writing today, one of your issues that
+you wrote about is that our U.S. policy toward Iran has only
+been a tactical success as there so far seems to have been
+little strategic progress in convincing Iran to change its
+behavior in the nuclear file.
+ How have these recent events in Egypt, Lebanon, and
+elsewhere throughout the region altered Tehran's strategic
+calculus and cost-benefit analysis? Please elaborate because we
+have got to be watching everything, and this is a big concern.
+ Mr. Satloff. Congresswoman, I couldn't agree with you more.
+I fear that the leaders of Iran are misreading our distraction
+on Egypt and are taking this as a moment of opportunity. I fear
+that they are seeing change in Lebanon, the events in Gaza, a
+serious emergence from isolation, and now the events in Egypt,
+I fear they are reading this as a series of body blows to U.S.
+interests and that they may be feeling that they are on a roll.
+ I think we should be very careful to keep our eyes vigilant
+about efforts by Iranians to use fifth columnists against other
+American allies in the gulf and elsewhere, and maybe a
+reconsideration by Iran of the pace of its nuclear program,
+believing that perhaps we are distracted elsewhere.
+ Now, on our side we do have assets. The administration, in
+my view, lost a great opportunity with the popular protests in
+Iran in the summer of 2009. And if you compare the Obama
+administration approach the summer of 2009 in Iran and January,
+2011, in Egypt, there is a stark contrast. I concur with my
+colleague, Mr. Abrams, that we should do our best to blow the
+winds of change to Tehran and Damascus. Far be it from us that
+we should be more supportive of democracy in countries that
+have historically been partners with us than historically that
+have been adversaries. And I think there is much we can do to
+advance that prospect.
+ Mrs. Ellmers. Thank you very much, and I yield back my
+time.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Congresswoman.
+ I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to our ranking member, Mr.
+Berman of California.
+ Mr. Berman. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
+ I would like, most particularly, because you addressed one
+issue that Congress is appropriately and directly involved in,
+is this whole issue of assistance to Egypt and how to handle it
+and what we should be calling for and what we should be doing
+and what the administration should be doing. My instinctive
+reaction because of wanting to incentivize the military using
+their authority to make this transition happen--and I agree, it
+is not clear to me that they have made that decision--was to be
+careful about messing around with the military assistance right
+now. Mr. Satloff, you sort of came down on that side, Dr.
+Satloff.
+ Elliott, you think we should cut off both military and
+economic assistance--or at least the working group statement
+that you are part of said that. Did you include democracy
+promotion activities in that? But I would like to hear the two
+of you just develop that. You generally see this much the same
+way and disagree on this specific issue. I would like to hear
+more.
+ Mr. Abrams. My view is that we need to tell the Egyptian
+military very clearly, Congress needs to tell them very clearly
+we are not going to pay for this suppression of democracy in
+Egypt. I agree, I think the army may not have made up its mind
+yet, so now is the time to signal them, this aid is
+conditional.
+ I would agree with Rob Satloff, I wouldn't cut it off
+today. First I would send that message that we are watching,
+and it could be cut off any day if you guys do a Tiananmen
+Square in Cairo, or even much less than that, if you make it
+clear that your goal is to maintain Mubarakism without Mubarak.
+ Mr. Satloff. I would say we are in violent agreement now.
+ The United States doesn't have so many levers. It would
+seem to me a mistake to preemptively deny us leverage at a
+moment when perhaps that leverage could be determinative. I
+don't want to exaggerate the potential for this to be the case,
+but why we would throw away an arrow before it is absolutely
+apparent that the Egyptian Army has made a choice to suppress
+and refuse change seems to be unwise.
+ Mr. Berman. And speak to the issue of how directly the
+administration should address Mubarak leaving office
+immediately, or how would you suggest they handle that issue?
+Any of you? All of you.
+ Mr. Satloff. I will offer my view. Once the President, last
+Tuesday, offered the imagery of him appearing on television 2
+hours after President Mubarak had said he was going to stay 8
+months, and the President got on television saying the words
+``now,'' even though there was some ambiguity in that
+statement, the ambiguity did not translate into Arabic. And
+everyone in the Middle East saw that Mubarak said 8 months, the
+President said ``now,'' and every day since then has been a
+victory for Mubarak.
+ It is not as though he needs to resign or leave the
+country. There are alternative constitutional arrangements that
+President Mubarak could take advantage of.
+ Mr. Berman. He could delegate his authority.
+ Mr. Satloff. According to the Egyptian Constitution, he
+could delegate his executive authority to his Vice President,
+which is a major constitutional decision that would send us off
+on a new path. That is what I would hope would be the direction
+in which we head.
+ Mr. Craner. I think on all these issues, whether it is
+Mubarak leaving, what do we need to do with the aid? We need to
+think about what we want to see in the end, what is our goal?
+And the goal is decent elections with, hopefully, moderates
+coming out very well in those elections. Then we need to work
+our way back and say, What is the best way to accomplish that?
+ So on the issue of aid, I think that is our largest trump
+card. I don't think it is time to play it yet. On the issue of
+military, I would agree with Elliott that we need to be very,
+very clear on what we are expecting.
+ On the issue of Mubarak, I think it is fair to ask if
+somebody who has led the kind of fraudulent elections that we
+have seen repeatedly over the last 30 years in Egypt is now
+capable of leading an effort for a fair and free election.
+ Mr. Berman. My time is expired.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. Excellent
+questions, Mr. Berman.
+ I am pleased to yield to the chair of the Subcommittee on
+Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights, Mr. Smith of New
+Jersey, for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chair. And congratulations
+again on your chairmanship. I look forward to serving with you
+and Ranking Member Berman.
+ Let me just begin by saying thank you to the three of you.
+I have known you; you are great leaders on behalf of human
+rights for decades.
+ The administration seems to find its voice on human rights
+and democracy, it seems to me, only when events portend radical
+change. A few weeks ago President Obama rolled out the red
+carpet for Chinese President Hu Jintao, a brutal dictator whose
+rise to power was initially enabled or advanced by the murder
+of hundreds of people in Tibet in 1989. Many of us were
+frustrated and profoundly disappointed. Even the Washington
+Post editorial said ``President Obama makes Hu Jintao look good
+on rights'' in their January 19 editorial. It was a scathing
+editorial.
+ Now that Mubarak is in trouble, this administration is
+making human rights demands--better late than never, but they
+are making them. Yet in its first year, the Obama
+administration cut democracy funding for Egypt by more than
+half. The democracy in governance total was $54.8 million in
+2008; it dropped to $23.5 million in 2009; and the request for
+2011 is $25 million. And the NGOs that are not registered,
+obviously don't even apply--a break with the Bush
+administration policy. As we all know, human rights groups that
+are not registered are usually the cutting edge in the avant-
+garde in terms of promoting human rights.
+ My question is--a day late and a dollar short, I am glad
+they are making statements--but will this lead to a
+matriculation from bad to worse, as we saw with the Shah of
+Iran? We all know that SAVAK was not a good group, his secret
+police, during the Iranian crisis. But now we have something
+that potentially could be profoundly worse than the Muslim
+Brotherhood.
+ Your thoughts on the Muslim Brotherhood. Are people being
+naive, somehow thinking that the Muslim Brotherhood will be
+benign and will have a nonviolent approach to politics?
+ Secondly, last month, Frank Wolf chaired a hearing on the
+Coptic Church in response to the violence which killed about
+23, we think, Coptic Christians; 100 were wounded. My question
+is, how will the Coptic Church, about 10 percent of Egypt's
+population, fare going forward, especially with the potential
+ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood?
+ And finally, Israel's profound concerns about the rise of
+the Muslim Brotherhood. I remember when President Bush kept
+saying we want free and fair elections, which brought in Hamas.
+Fattah was certainly a corrupt organization and had terrorists
+in its ranks, but it went from bad to worse when there was an
+election.
+ Our fear is, I think on both sides of the aisle, that the
+Muslim Brotherhood's animosity toward Israel is well
+documented. Your views on that.
+ Mr. Abrams. Thank you.
+ A word on the Copts, I would just say I worry a lot about
+that, because as we look through the whole region, the
+situation of Christian communities throughout the region is
+very bad and worsening. On Copts, we should not glamorize how
+great the situation has been in Egypt. As you know, it has been
+impossible to build churches, to repair churches under Hosni
+Mubarak. There has been a lot of discrimination against Copts
+in his Egypt. But I think we do have to worry, in the context
+of the Muslim Brotherhood, about a more Islamic Egypt being
+even more discriminatory against them.
+ On the Muslim Brotherhood takeover, that is something that
+has to worry all of us. And I agree with Rob Satloff that I
+think conditions that, for example, forbid religious parties
+are actually potentially quite useful. But I would just say the
+bulwark that keeps this from being Iran is the army, and that
+is why I worry, as he does. Every day that the army is
+associated with Hosni Mubarak today in suppressing these
+demonstrations diminishes the legitimacy and popularity of the
+army. Every day they are complicit with the police and the
+thugs, it makes it a lot harder for them to keep the revered
+position they have had in Egypt, and that is a great worry.
+ Mr. Craner. You talked about the elections in the
+Palestinian territories. Some of us would argue it was because
+elections didn't occur for so long--and they were repeatedly
+delayed--that the Palestinian Authority had ample opportunity
+to demonstrate how corrupt and useless it was in terms of
+delivering services. And that only strengthened Hamas. You have
+to ask yourself if over time, if change is delayed in Egypt, if
+that only makes the Muslim Brotherhood stronger over time. I
+think that is a fair question to ask.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. The gentleman's time has expired.
+ I am pleased to yield for 5 minutes of questioning to the
+ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South
+Asia, Mr. Ackerman of New York.
+ Mr. Ackerman. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
+ I think it is more frustrating to see you guys in so much
+agreement than if you were disagreeing. At least we would be
+able to figure out where to push or not push our own
+administration. It is frustrating to see that they are not
+moving in the same direction. That, to me, makes great common
+sense with what the entire panel seems to be saying.
+ We are not going to have a second chance to make a great
+impression on the people in the street who are at their most
+vulnerable point right now and probably a lot more malleable as
+to what the United States interests are and what our real
+intentions are here.
+ While I am not sure I wholly agree with what Mr. Abrams
+said about sending an ambassador to Syria, not sending an
+ambassador I guess is a message in and of itself, but when you
+don't send a messenger, how do you send a second message is the
+question?
+ We have messengers in Egypt, and one of the messengers that
+we should be using is the military. We have paid a lot of money
+to help in the formation of the virtues that the military seems
+to possess and the restraint that they have apparently been
+demonstrating in the streets. Should we not be more closely
+using that tie to have a Nixon moment to deliver a message via
+the military to Mr. Mubarak? Should not they be the ones that
+help impact? Because the longer this thing takes, the worse the
+position is for the United States to influence the opinions in
+the street.
+ My second question is about the Muslim Brotherhood, which I
+think is critical here; how we deal with that and how we help
+the leadership deal with that and the military. It is my view
+that if you over-pesticide your garden, only the weeds are
+going to survive. And that is what we have here as far as
+looking at who the leaders of the opposition are. We have
+killed all the flowers--he has killed all the flowers, I should
+say, Mubarak--and the Brotherhood is left. They are not the
+March of Dimes--Mr. Satloff is right--neither are they the
+``march of the benign,'' but are they the ``march of demons''?
+How concerned should we be and how do we get the military to
+keep up the bulwark of the opposition to him in the formation
+of any new government?
+ Dr. Satloff.
+ Mr. Satloff. In terms of the military, I think the thrust
+of your comment is correct. The President, and just yesterday
+Secretary Gates, had very laudatory words for the military.
+What is unclear is whether in private our political and
+military leadership--Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen, et
+cetera--are being as tough in private as they are being
+complimentary in public. In private, the Egyptian military
+should know very clearly what actions or inactions it takes or
+doesn't take would trigger the end of aid that you spoke about
+earlier. I don't know if that is happening. That is essential.
+ In terms of the Muslim Brotherhood, I think we should
+recognize and be vigilant about the danger, not exaggerate the
+danger. There is no inevitability that the Muslim Brotherhood
+is going to come to power in Egypt, and we can't have a self-
+fulfilling prophesy here; that would be a mistake. There is a
+huge range of non-Islamist political forces that deserve our
+assistance and support. And indeed, one of the things that we
+should be pressing for urgently is a change in the Egyptian law
+that prevents our direct assistance to so many important
+nongovernmental organizations in that country. Don't
+exaggerate, but also don't be naive. I think that is the right
+approach.
+ Mr. Ackerman. Mr. Craner.
+ Mr. Craner. Egypt would not be the first military that was
+starting to lose, as Rob noted, is starting to lose its good
+reputation in a country because it was sticking too close to a
+dictator. This happened in Pakistan where the military, which
+was the most revered institution in the country, started
+descending in people's opinions. I think that is something we
+ought to remind them of. I think certainly American assistance
+is something we ought to remind them of. I am sure the Chinese
+would be happy to supply tanks and aircraft, but they are not
+American tanks and aircraft and tactics.
+ In terms of the Brotherhood, I would agree with Rob, I am
+afraid to say. I would agree with Rob. We need to stop
+presenting ourselves with the choice that Mubarak gave us and
+understand that there are people in the middle. This is why I
+personally do not favor quick elections; I think some time is
+needed to be able to work with those folks. But we shouldn't
+repeat to ourselves Mubarak's choice.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. The gentleman's time has expired.
+ Mr. Burton, chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe and
+Eurasia, is recognized for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Burton. Elliott, it is good seeing you again. You and I
+go back all the way to Central America and the problems back
+there in the early eighties during Reagan's administration, so
+it is good seeing you.
+ I would like to broaden the discussion just a little bit.
+The problems in Egypt seem to be manifesting itself in some of
+the other states, not to the degree that you see in Egypt, but
+there is concern about the Persian Gulf area, the Straits of
+Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and what that means for the United
+States of America. And I am very concerned about that. We are
+not moving toward energy independence. Our dependency on
+Venezuela and the Middle East is even greater now than it has
+been in the past. We get about 30 percent of our energy from
+the Middle East and about 20 percent, or thereabouts, from
+Venezuela. We have got some people that don't like us very much
+that we are getting our oil from.
+ So my concern is what is likely to happen in these other
+countries, and whether or not there is a possibility that we
+could see a bottling up of the Suez Canal, the Straits of
+Hormuz, and the Persian Gulf, what that means to the United
+States. If we don't drill here in the ANWR and drill off the
+Continental Shelf and in the Gulf of Mexico and use some of the
+300 or 400 years of natural gas and coal shale that we have
+while we are transitioning to these other new technologies,
+windmills and solar and nuclear and so forth, what is going to
+happen in the United States? What is your prognostication on
+whether or not this sort of thing could happen over there and
+how can we deal with that?
+ Right now I am sure you all know that there are some
+rumblings going on in the Persian Gulf States, there are some
+minor rumblings going on in Syria; we have already heard some
+minor rumblings in Jordan, as well as Egypt. And also we have
+our good friend, Israel, that is right in the middle of all
+this. And if that thing blows up, they are certainly going to
+defend themselves, which could be a catalyst for a major
+problem.
+ So I know this is a very broad question, but I would like
+to know how this affects the United States and our security,
+both economically and militarily.
+ Elliott, why don't we start with you?
+ Mr. Abrams. Thank you, Mr. Burton. Thank you for the kind
+words. It is great to see you again.
+ So far, the Suez Canal is open for business, and it is
+certainly in the interests of the Egyptian military to keep it
+open. I think if we see any sign of Iranian reactions to this,
+taking advantage of this, it would be timely for America's
+military leaders to stop talking about how catastrophic it
+would be if there were ever a strike on Iran, and to start
+saying that if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz, we will open
+them; we will open them fast, and they will pay the price. I
+think we should make that very, very plain to the Iranians.
+ I also would just say I agree with you that we have an
+incredible development in shale gas that gives us an
+opportunity to be independent of Middle Eastern oil, not
+tomorrow morning, but not 50 years from now either. To me it
+seems that we ought to be moving as fast as we can to develop
+that resource and make ourselves energy independent.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Craner.
+ Mr. Craner. The one allied country in the Persian Gulf that
+I think ought to be of some concern is Bahrain, where they have
+rolled back a lot of the openings that they had made, where you
+have got a heavy Shiite population. Obviously, once you get
+beyond that--Qatar, Oman, et cetera, I think are going to be
+pretty stable. And again, it is Iran that I would worry about.
+I would worry a lot about Iran trying to take advantage of all
+these events far afield from where they are. They have got to
+be happy watching some of these newscasts.
+ Mr. Satloff. Just very briefly, not all rumblings are the
+same, not all rumblings are bad news. I would hope that we
+would see more rumblings in Syria and Iran. It advantages our
+interests. And if we could help propel the winds of change to
+Damascus and Tehran, that would be good.
+ Secondly, I do think that the situation in Jordan is
+different than what we have seen in Egypt and Tunisia. The
+Jordanians--it is a serious situation, but I don't think that
+it is by any means approaching the crisis point that we saw in
+Egypt and Tunisia. I think in general we have to caution
+against the concept of dominoes falling from one country to
+another. It is a very different situation in some of these
+countries.
+ Mr. Burton. Thank you.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Burton.
+ I am pleased to yield to our friend from American Samoa,
+Mr. Faleomavaega, for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Madam Chair. Congratulations
+on your attainment of the chairmanship of this committee. I am
+looking forward to working with you and your colleagues on the
+other side of the aisle.
+ I do want to thank the gentlemen for their testimonies this
+morning.
+ It is quite obvious that there are so many undercurrents
+and crosscurrents now developing as far as the crisis that we
+are facing in Egypt at this time. Some 350 million Arabs live
+in this part of the world. I wanted to know how difficult the
+problem is now that we are confronted with it.
+ Would you agree that our general policy toward Egypt has
+been never mind about democracy as long as there is stability?
+And is there a sense of resentment among the Egyptians that
+say, Oh, now the United States wants to look for another
+Mubarak to continue the policy of stability, more importantly,
+than that of democracy--as I think our good friend, my
+colleague from New York, has given concern as to whether or not
+our Government is going to allow the Egyptian people ultimately
+to make that decision for themselves and to their future. I
+would like your comments on that.
+ Mr. Abrams. Thank you. I think you are right. I think that
+except for some brief periods--2004, 2005, especially--we have
+basically been uninterested as a country in democracy in Egypt.
+We have taken--and we have exaggerated, I would also say--the
+benefits we get from President Mubarak, and there are a lot of
+Egyptians who I think do resent it. I think we could overcome
+that resentment if we make it clear right now that we really do
+hope their revolution succeeds. And I think the administration
+has not been clear about that. I think it has been straddling
+the fence. It is time for the United States to make it very
+clear that we think what is going on is really terrific and
+that we hope for nothing more than democracy in Egypt.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Craner.
+ Mr. Craner. I have no question that what you just said is
+absolutely true. I think we do have a chance to redeem
+ourselves. I think if we look back at our experiences in Chile
+and in the Philippines under President Reagan, they provide
+good guides about how to move.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. Mr. Satloff.
+ Mr. Satloff. Sir, over just the last week, my organization
+funded a poll in Egypt through the Pechter Middle East polling
+firm, which is the first polling data to come out of Egypt
+since the crisis. One of the findings is this crisis is not
+anti-American. It is anti-Mubarak, but it is not anti-American.
+That is a good sign, and that gives us a good foundation on
+which to move forward. I don't know if it will last, and we do
+have to make important decisions to ensure that it doesn't fall
+backward, but we have a surprisingly strong foundation on which
+to move forward in Egypt.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. For the past 30 years we have given Egypt
+well over $65 billion in assistance, and $36 billion of that
+went to the military to prop up Egypt's military defense
+forces.
+ Would you agree that if this crisis really comes to a
+boiling point where there is going to be riots and all of that,
+that the military definitely will have to step in and take
+control of the government?
+ Mr. Satloff. Sir, I think the military has already stepped
+in to take control of the government. We have two military Vice
+Presidents and a military Prime Minister and still a military
+President. What we hope for is a military to chart the
+transition and to take irrevocable decisions toward change.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. And even if we make threats toward the
+military, saying that we are going to cut off your funding, I
+am quite sure that there are going to be other sources out
+there that are more than willing to compensate for whatever
+restrictions or whatever decisions that we make, and say we are
+not going to fund you, they are going to find other sources.
+ So isn't it ultimately that this is going to be one of the
+most critical points where the military definitely is going to
+be the real power behind whatever is going to happen in the
+coming weeks and even months as far as Egypt's future is
+concerned?
+ Mr. Abrams. It will. And I think they are in charge right
+now. And even if we grant that they could find the money
+someplace else--I am not sure, $1 billion is still a lot of
+money--but even if we grant that, the question is about us more
+than about them: Where do we stand? What do we want our money
+going for? What record will be compiled in this crisis created
+in Egypt? I think that is even more important in a sense.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. I think my time is up.
+ Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Faleomavaega.
+ I now would like to yield 5 minutes to the chairman of the
+Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Mr. Rohrabacher of
+California.
+ Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. These witnesses have
+been excellent witnesses today. I thank each one of you for
+sharing your expertise and also for your service to our country
+in the past years and the service to the cause of democracy.
+ I would like to identify myself with this commitment to
+democracy as articulated by our witnesses. I do think that we
+could have been giving advice to the regime and to the military
+and perhaps forcing more democratic reform over the years. That
+certainly is important, not just looking forward but looking
+back.
+ However, let me just note where we are today. I find it
+very disturbing that there is such a contrast between the
+administration's muffled and restrained response to the brutal
+repression of demonstrators against the anti-American Mullah
+regime in Tehran as compared--and that is in stark contrast to
+the embracing of the demonstrators against a less than
+democratic friendly government in Egypt. I think that sends
+exactly the wrong message to many people in power.
+ This administration's response to events in Egypt has
+basically been responding to these events with a confused and
+unreliable voice that will have, I believe, serious
+consequences, long-term consequences for the cause of freedom
+and stability in this volatile region. And it does a
+disservice, I might add, to American security interests as
+well.
+ President Mubarak has been a force for stability, even
+though his rule has been very imperfect and less than
+democratic. Improving that does not mean making decisions that
+could well result in the empowerment of radical Islamic forces
+like the Muslim Brotherhood.
+ Specifically, President Mubarak reached out to his people
+and to democratic countries throughout the world with an
+announcement that neither he nor his son would run for
+President and that he would work with those to try to ensure
+free and fair elections. Well, giving the moderates and the
+democratic forces in Egypt 8 months, until September, to
+organize and to participate in a democratic process seems to be
+a responsible strategy and something that we should have
+embraced and worked to make sure that it was indeed ensuring
+free and fair elections. Instead, the Obama administration
+began calling for immediate change, the alternative to
+President Mubarak must be put in place now.
+ Well, what would that result in? By immediately installing
+a new government could well mean that we are installing a
+government that has not been elected to anything. And while
+Mubarak is imperfect, the people that we are saying should be
+installed now wouldn't have any legitimacy in terms of
+democratic base work for their power, especially if those
+people who end up--because we are demanding immediate leaving
+power of Mubarak now--end up to be anti-democratic in their
+very nature, or so radically Islamic that they wouldn't permit
+real freedom in their country.
+ I would argue that the administration's actions have been
+contrary to the long-term interests of democracy and stability
+in Egypt. So I would hope that we would work with the
+administration, all of us would try to do our part. And I would
+hope that the United States does not in any way compromise our
+long-term commitment to the Egyptian people that we side with
+democracy, but we need to do this in a responsible way that
+will not in the long term result in less democracy and less
+freedom.
+ You wonder about some of these young women who are marching
+down the streets complaining about Mubarak, whether or not they
+are going to end up with a regime that forces them to wear
+burqas and cover their face and shut up and not be involved in
+national politics, like we have seen in other radical Islamic
+countries.
+ We have been doing more than just throwing Mubarak under
+the bus, we have been throwing him to the wolves. And perhaps
+the future of democracy and freedom in that part of the world
+will be eaten up as well.
+ I just went on a rambling rave myself. You have 40 seconds
+to make your comments.
+ Mr. Abrams. Just a very quick one. I think it is important
+to distinguish what can be done tomorrow and what can't. There
+can't be elections tomorrow, not anything that we would regard
+as free and fair and reasonable ones. They could lift the
+emergency law tomorrow. After 30 years, it is time. Omar
+Suleiman said, yes, it should be lifted as soon as security
+conditions permit. He has been saying that for 30 years. It is
+time.
+ Mr. Craner. I think the best judge is whether they are
+moving forward with the kind of conditions that could lead to
+free and fair elections. When the Vice President says his
+people aren't ready for democracy, that answers the question.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. The gentleman's
+time has expired.
+ I am pleased to yield to Mr. Payne of New Jersey, the
+ranking member on Africa, Global Health and Human Rights, for 5
+minutes.
+ Mr. Payne. Thank you very much.
+ As you know, we have a history of supporting dictators.
+Usually our foreign policy has very little to do with the
+manner that they treat their people--the Mobutus in Zaire to
+the Savimbis in Angola, the F.W. Botha in South Africa. We can
+go on and on--the Shah of Iran; Marcos in the Philippines.
+ How do you see us moving in the future? Are we going to, in
+your opinions, still back bad guys that we know they are bad
+but they are okay to us, or are we going to sort of have
+democracy to try to have a process going in those countries
+where you can have the will of the people expressed? How do you
+see us going in the future? Because this Egypt thing is not
+over. It is not the Obama administration that fouled up
+somewhere. This thing, as you know, goes way back to Britain
+wanting to block up the Suez Canal back in the fifties. So what
+do you think about our relationship to dictators in the future?
+ Mr. Craner. Obviously, it is important right now to spend a
+lot of time on Egypt. What happens in Egypt is going to have
+huge consequences for the region. But I hope that this
+experience with Egypt, where the conventional wisdom was it was
+going to be stable--certainly the conventional wisdom was that
+Tunisia was going to be stable--will lead to us look around the
+world at other countries that we think are important to the
+United States where we are currently muting ourselves on
+democracy and human rights. It doesn't mean you have to push
+one or the other; you can have a relationship, if you need to,
+with an authoritarian government. But you can't believe the
+dissidents and the democrats who we have learned time and again
+will one day inevitably come to power on their own, and when
+they do come to power they are looking around and saying,
+``America did nothing for us.''
+ So whether it is in Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan or China, we
+need to be looking at these countries and thinking about what
+we are doing whenever change may come to those places.
+ Mr. Satloff. Just to add a specific word about where we
+might ensure our focus in the broader Middle East, events in
+Egypt have obscured our attention from Tunisia, and I think we
+need to make sure that the Tunisian example actually leads to a
+good outcome. It is on a positive path, but it is by no means
+assured that Tunisia will lead to the right endgame. I think we
+can't lose focus on that.
+ And secondly, sir, I would suggest that in the Palestinian
+Authority, certainly in the West Bank, it is important that our
+partner have greater popular legitimacy, in talking about the
+leadership for the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abass. And
+there is no better way to have popular legitimacy than through
+the popular support of elections.
+ And so I think we should consider talking with our friends
+there about ways to enhance their popular legitimacy through
+elections. We don't want the type of change that we have seen
+in Egypt and Tunisia to be the norm of how change happens in
+our friendly countries.
+ Mr. Abrams. Yes, I agree with both my friends here, Mr.
+Payne.
+ I think one of the things we have learned is that the so-
+called ``realism'' that led us to support these dictators is
+not so realistic in the end after all, and a policy of
+supporting democracy may actually turn out to be more
+realistic.
+ Mr. Payne. Well, there is a situation going on in Cote
+d'Ivoire, which not much attention of course is being paid to
+right now, but the current President was defeated, everyone
+agrees he has been defeated, but he is refusing to leave. With
+16 elections coming up and after this year, if this person who
+lost the election, Gbagbo, remains to stay in, that simply
+sends a bad message for these 16 elections coming, and also, it
+might even have impact on the police in the Middle East,
+ Let me just ask one last question. Both you, Mr. Abrams,
+and you, Dr. Satloff, have different opinions on the support
+from your Egypt group about military support and assistance
+continuing. You both have opposite positions. Could you, in
+about 15 seconds each, tell your position and why?
+ Mr. Satloff. My position is that we should use whatever
+leverage we have to try to convince the Egyptian Army to make
+the right decision. Positive conditionality. There is always a
+time in the future that we can cut off aid when it is apparent
+that the Egyptian military has taken the path solely of
+repression and suppression of popular protests.
+ Mr. Abrams. I think we actually do agree on that. I
+wouldn't cut it off today, but I would send a very strong
+message today to the Egyptian military that it is in jeopardy.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. The gentleman's
+time has expired.
+ If I could ask Mr. Royce, before I recognize you, if you
+could take over as chair for me. I have to meet some
+constituents. And I will recognize Mr. Royce, the chair of the
+Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade for 5
+minutes of questioning. Thank you, Mr. Royce.
+ Mr. Royce [presiding]. Mr. Craner, I had an opportunity
+over the weekend to meet with seven Egyptians from Cairo and
+Alexandria, who recently traveled here from Egypt. Here is what
+they shared with me. Their observation was that the Muslim
+Brotherhood did not start this uprising, as they called it. It
+came from young professionals. But they said that if the
+Brotherhood gets the upper hand, eventually it would be a
+bloody terror for those who did not subscribe to the
+fundamentalist approach of the Brotherhood. They said if you
+want to see how this will play out, think of what happened to
+the Baha'i in Iran; think of what happened to the students and
+to the young democratic enthusiasts that went to the streets
+against the Shah and then ultimately found themselves in prison
+or shot when the fundamentalist regime came to power. They said
+it is the fate of the guillotine if the revolution goes the
+wrong way afterwards.
+ Here was their point: They said the Brotherhood is a group
+that does not believe in pluralism. There is no equality for
+women; there is no equality under their conception of Islam for
+non-Muslims or for Muslims who deviate from their viewpoint. So
+they say they have embraced elections as a means to power,
+basically. And given their past history, in their view, why
+shouldn't there be qualifications on candidates that don't
+support pluralism? Because otherwise it is going to be a
+situation where you are going to have one free election one
+time, because they view this group as hell bent on this path.
+So I was going to ask you about that.
+ I was going to ask you, should they not be allowed to
+participate? And maybe you could tell us a little bit about the
+Brotherhood's lack of democratic bona fides.
+ Now the other thing that I wanted to ask you about is the
+effort that the United States made some years ago with Hernando
+de Soto. This is the other issue they wanted to share with me,
+the utter corruption in that society. Hernando de Soto, the
+Peruvian economist, went to Egypt in 2004, did a massive study,
+and found that gaining the legal title to a vacant piece of
+land takes 10 years; to open a bakery takes about 500 days. You
+have 56 government agencies you have to go through. They were
+telling me about this process in Egypt, you know, 20 bribes to
+open a small company.
+ So they said, ``Look at the consequences of that.''
+Hernando de Soto brought that plan forward to the Egyptian
+Cabinet to unlock an amount of capital in Egypt 100 times
+more--more than that of what we give Egypt in support, right?
+And they have a Minister in Egypt that supports a reform to
+bring transparency to the legal system, and this guy was
+sacked. And as a consequence, as de Soto said, hidden forces of
+the status quo blocked crucial elements of the reform. You
+cannot get reform under the current system.
+ And this is something else I wanted to ask you to respond
+to. In the United States, here we have a U.S.-funded study that
+helps institute crucial legal and institutional reforms that is
+blocked by the government. Do we object, do we protest, do we
+register a complaint, do we threaten to cut off aid? Do
+situations like this even get the Ambassador's attention? What
+do we do about this level of corruption in the regime? If you
+can respond.
+ Mr. Craner. In a place that is so corrupt as Egypt, I don't
+think a plan like Hernando de Soto's could move forward. I
+think it would take a different kind of system. Here I would
+point to Georgia, which under Shevardnadze was one of the most
+corrupt countries in the former Soviet Union, which is quite a
+claim. They have moved forward dramatically under their new
+government to end corruption. I think when Saakashvili came
+into power, over 90 percent of the people reported they had had
+to pay a bribe within the previous 3 months. Now it is exactly
+the opposite. But I don't think in a system like Egypt that on
+corruption is rotten to the core you are going to see any kind
+of change. There are too many people that have their hand in
+the till under this system. It is changeable, as Georgia has
+shown, but not under this regime.
+ I think on the issue of the Muslim Brotherhood, you and I
+faced this issue in South Africa almost 20 years ago, about
+whether certain parties were going to be allowed to run. At
+that time, the issue was whether or not they were committed to
+nonviolence. I think those kind of conditions are very, very
+fair. It shouldn't be that people who are against pluralism or
+are pro-violence are allowed to be violent on a Tuesday and
+stand for election on a Thursday.
+ Mr. Royce. Well, I thank you, Mr. Craner. I am going to go
+to Mr. Satloff for any observations on that as well.
+ Mr. Satloff. Two brief observations about the political
+system and its potential evolution vis-a-vis the Muslim
+Brotherhood. There is currently a constitutional clause in
+Egypt that no party based on religion is allowed. It will be
+for the Egyptians to determine whether that gets amended.
+Should they ask the United States or the U.S. Embassy for its
+advice, I would urge that we should not advocate for changing
+that fundamental principle.
+ Secondly, there is some discussion about the order of
+elections, Presidential, parliamentary, et cetera. It makes
+much sense that there be a Presidential election before there
+is a new parliamentary election. Under the Egyptian
+Constitution, the chances of a moderate, liberal-minded
+Presidential victor are far greater than a parliamentary
+outcome that would lead similarly to that end.
+ Mr. Royce. I would like to yield to Mr. Berman for a point.
+ Mr. Berman. I would very much agree, except for one issue.
+Will this Parliament that is in place as a result of a
+manipulated election make the changes that we think are
+necessary to ensure the legalized parties create a process?
+ Mr. Satloff. I think the short answer is this Parliament
+will do what the political leadership of the country tells it
+to do. So I would not make changing the composition of this
+Parliament the be-all and end-all of Egyptian political reform.
+ Mr. Royce. Thank you, Mr. Satloff.
+ I would like to go now to Mr. Engle of New York for your
+questioning.
+ Mr. Engel. Thank you. I would like to ask a question about
+Egypt and also do Lebanon as well, because I wrote the Syria
+Accountability Act. And one of the things that we used in that
+act--I did it with the current chair, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen--we
+wanted Syria to get out of Lebanon. And we know that there has
+been a lot of change and uproar in Lebanon. First of all, the
+pro-Western government fell, there is a new Prime Minister
+Designate Mikati.
+ I would like to ask anyone who would care to answer, what
+is your assessment of him? Is he qualified for the position? He
+was obviously nominated by Hezbollah, so that makes me worried.
+So I would just like you to answer that.
+ I would also like to speak about the Special Tribunal in
+Lebanon. Hezbollah bitterly opposes the Special Tribunal
+because that is the international body investigating the 2005
+assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Hariri. It is
+widely expected that the Special Tribunal will indict some
+members of Hezbollah.
+ And what should the administration do if that happens and
+the Lebanese Government decides to withdraw its material and
+verbal support from the STL? Should we at that point attempt to
+pick up the financial slack? So let me ask that Lebanese
+question first.
+ And then my question on Egypt is: What are the similarities
+that you see between the uprising in Iran and the revolution of
+1979 and this? Many people have said it is very similar, many
+people have said no because of differences. I would like to
+hear your analyses on it. Anybody who would care to answer
+either question, I would be grateful.
+ Mr. Abrams. Mr. Engel, I will just start.
+ I think that Mr. Mikati is, in the technical sense,
+qualified to be Prime Minister of Lebanon, but as you said, he
+was put there by Hezbollah. This is supposed to be, under their
+Constitution, a Sunni seat, but the Sunni community did not
+choose him. He is a cat's-paw for Hezbollah. This is, in a
+sense, a soft coup by Hezbollah. And I would argue that if
+Prime Minister Mikati does not support this Special Tribunal
+for Lebanon, I hope our relations with him reflect that. I
+would, for example, suggest he not be invited to the United
+States to meet the President, to go to the White House, to come
+up here on the Hill, if that is the position that he is taking.
+ Just very quickly, I would draw two distinctions between
+the Iran situation and that of Egypt. One, there is no
+Khomeini. There is no great opposition leader that we have to
+fear, let's say, on the Muslim Brotherhood side; nor is there,
+unfortunately, a Walesa, a Havel, on the democratic side.
+ The second difference is the army collapsed in Iran, and of
+course it hasn't collapsed in Egypt. And one of the things that
+we are all saying here today is we don't want it to collapse.
+We want it, however, not to try to maintain the old regime
+forever or people will lose faith in it.
+ Mr. Engel. Thank you.
+ Mr. Craner. I think that was an important point, that there
+is no central religious figure to fear in Egypt. And I think
+that things have not gotten so rotten and so bad in Egypt that
+you really have people accruing to that religious leader or
+religious party and leaving almost no room for what we used to
+call moderates in Iran.
+ Mr. Satloff. First, I think we should remember how fresh
+and new the Egyptian situation is. Less time has passed in
+Egypt than what took Ben Ali to leave in Tunisia, and that was
+so fast. We should not rule out the idea that leaders will
+emerge, whether it is this Google executive, or someone else
+may emerge to be the face of the faceless revolution, and that
+would be important.
+ I do concur with the sentiments that were expressed by
+Elliott on Lebanon, Congressman. I would just add that there
+are Security Council requirements, both regarding the Special
+Tribunal on Lebanon and regarding security in the south, that
+the Government of Lebanon is required to maintain. And it would
+be appropriate for the United States not to have to act alone,
+but to act in concert with its Security Council partners to see
+that either this government in Lebanon fulfills its
+requirements or is censured. And that would be a great
+embarrassment to Lebanon, to the Hezbollah-backed government.
+ Mr. Engel. I just think, and let me conclude, that the
+violation in Lebanon of the cease-fire in the war with Israel,
+with all these missiles and weapons which were supposed to be
+not allowed to come back in the country, is really alarming and
+it is something we really need to take very seriously.
+ Thank you, Madam Chairman.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Engel.
+ I am pleased to yield to the chairman of our Subcommittee
+on the Middle East, Mr. Chabot, for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chair.
+ Mr. Crane, you stated in your testimony that as a
+democratic form of government slowly begins to take shape in
+Iraq, having similar political developments in Cairo could have
+great consequences for the region. Conversely, given the
+violent birth of and halting steps toward democracy in Iraq,
+chaos or a more repressive government in Egypt will discourage
+and further delay much needed reform in the region.
+ Could you elaborate on the implications for our efforts in
+Iraq of the events currently unfolding in Egypt and how will it
+affect U.S. leverage?
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. And Mr. Craner, if you could put the
+microphone a little closer to your mouth. Thank you.
+ Mr. Craner. I said that, because if you look historically
+over the last 5,000 years, the two centers of learning and
+intellect in the region have been principally Cairo, but also
+Baghdad. And so if you are a Syrian or an Algerian or a Yemeni,
+you have traditionally looked to or you may have gone to school
+in the old days in one of those two places. Today, you may also
+have gone to the American University in Beirut. But those are
+the kind of two traditional intellectual leader cities and
+countries in the region. So if you had democracy in those two
+principle pillars for Arab culture, then it would be difficult,
+if you are in another Arab country, to say democracy is not
+going to work here.
+ Alternatively, if things were to go badly in Egypt, you
+would then be in a position in another country to say, is that
+what they mean by democracy? You had all that violence in Iraq
+and look what happened in Egypt. So the stakes are very, very
+high in Egypt, I think.
+ Mr. Chabot. Thank you.
+ Mr. Abrams, over the past decades, the United States has
+given the Mubarak regime billions of dollars in nonsecurity
+assistance, and such assistance has, unfortunately, not led to
+significant political or economic reforms, as we all know. How
+should the executive branch and Congress going forward leverage
+our economic assistance to encourage real reforms?
+ Mr. Abrams. Mr. Chabot, I think there have been changes in
+the Egyptian economy, and the rich have gotten a lot richer.
+There are now Egyptian billionaires on the Forbes list, but
+there has not been much trickle down and the poor remain
+desperately poor.
+ I would hope that what we would try to do in our economic
+assistance is, first of all, help those who are poorest. And
+secondly, see if we can encourage the new government that is
+going to be coming in to adopt economic reforms that are not
+simply about increasing foreign direct investment or getting
+the stock market to rise, but about helping people in the lower
+middle class, working class, and the poorest people.
+ One of the problems we have with our aid program in Egypt
+is Egyptians don't know it exists. Some other countries have
+built stadiums and things like that that are very visible, but
+an awful lot of Egyptians don't know that we have given
+billions of dollars in aid to Egypt.
+ Mr. Chabot. Thank you very much.
+ Dr. Satloff, I was struck by your comment that you made
+that basically the worst of all worlds for the United States to
+be in was to be neither feared, nor respected, nor loved. I
+would invite yours, and if there is any time left, the other
+members--how can we avoid that hereon?
+ Mr. Satloff. Generally, the rule in the Middle East is
+reward your friends and punish your adversaries, and it is
+usually a smart policy to follow. The Egyptian case cuts
+through the middle of it because we have a partner who is both
+friend to us and adversary to us in different respects. Clarity
+here is important. I think, as I said earlier, that the longer
+that there is no visible change at the top, the more our
+influence wanes.
+ If I could add just one brief comment, sir, about the
+economic question, I suspect that the leaders of Egypt view it
+a bit differently. They probably see that all these protestors
+have cell phones, Facebook pages, access to computers; they
+can't be so poor. And they are probably saying to themselves,
+my gosh, all that work that we did to advance the Egyptian
+economy only led to popular protests, only led to more
+opposition. I think we should be wary elsewhere that leaders
+will find ways to limit the sort of growth that led to the
+popular protest. Egypt has had 5 percent growth for years, and
+this is an outcome that authoritarians will be fearful of in
+the future.
+ Mr. Chabot. Thank you. I have 15 seconds, if either one of
+the other gentlemen would like to--okay. I yield back, Madam
+Chair. Thank you.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Chabot.
+ I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to Mr. Meeks of New York,
+the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia.
+ Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Madam Chairman. And congratulations
+to you, also.
+ Let me just say this and throw out a question. I, too, over
+the weekend have had the opportunity to sit down with some
+young people, some who just came back from Egypt who reside in
+my district, et cetera. And I have got to tell you, I have come
+away tremendously impressed in all of the conversation that we
+have been having today.
+ I have confidence in the Egyptian people. They have gone to
+the streets and said what they want and what they don't want.
+They clearly want to move into a more free society, something
+that I don't think anybody could have ever done for them. They
+did it for themselves. And as a result of that, I know we can
+talk and we have our interests, of course, but ultimately they
+are going to decide their own Constitution. And I think that to
+the degree that we try to say, well, this should be in there or
+this should not be in there, then--it is not anti-American now,
+but if we try to tell them what should or should not happen,
+just as they are revolting against Mubarak, that then I think
+becomes the danger that we have because they are clear.
+ Now, one of the things that they were not as clear on when
+I asked them, is who could rise from among them to be a leader,
+who could be the candidate; because clearly there is no clear
+leader within the opposition. And my question to them was then,
+in all of this, in doing a new Constitution, et cetera, it
+takes individuals to sit down, to talk, to negotiate. I
+referenced our Constitution, our men at that time, and
+hopefully now men and women will be sitting down and talking.
+ Have you any idea who is in that group that will be talking
+to help rewrite the Constitution so that whoever comes up, we
+will then have an entree to try to continue the kind of
+relationship that we have had in the past but in a democratic
+forum?
+ Mr. Satloff. Congressman, yesterday the Egyptian Government
+appointed a panel of constitutional experts--judges, lawyers,
+et cetera--many of whom are very loyal to President Mubarak,
+some have been vocal opponents of the President over the last
+number of years. It is not clear that this group will have
+popular legitimacy.
+ There are other groups that are out there as well. There is
+a group called the Wise Men, public figures, both businessmen
+and civic leaders. There are the leaders of the youth. They
+have tried to organize themselves into an important coalition
+of leaders. There are the traditional parties that the regime
+has tolerated; they are small, they have been around for many
+years. They don't have much popular support. But they do
+understand the Constitution and they do understand Egyptian
+law.
+ There is no coalescing yet, they don't all agree, except
+almost all of them seem to agree on the idea that the
+President, either in his person or in his authorities, must go.
+That important, visible, irrevocable change seems to be a
+common feature of the opposition.
+ Mr. Craner. I think there are leaders out there. You have
+El Baradei, you have Ayman Nour, you have others. There are
+many people whose names are not household words in the United
+States or maybe even in Egypt because of the repression all
+these years. I think what will be important is to note, number
+one, if you have an election soon nobody is going to know those
+leaders' names. And number two, if the good people in the
+middle are not able to come together to form a coalition and
+perhaps to come up with a common candidate, then you could have
+things going badly.
+ Mr. Meeks. What--go ahead.
+ Mr. Abrams. I agree with that, and I think there are people
+who will come to the fore, because like Ayman Nour, who ran
+against Mubarak in 2005, they are known to be opponents of the
+old regime.
+ Mr. Meeks. And within those groups what are you hearing in
+regards because when we do talk about U.S. interests I am also
+concerned about our ally, Israel. Is there any kind of
+consensus because at least there have been a peace, might have
+been a cold peace, and you talk about the Suez Canal, you talk
+about--and I know that President Netanyahu is concerned. Is
+there any conversation that you have heard on the ground in
+regards to Israel?
+ Mr. Satloff. There is no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood
+has gone on record as seeking the cancelation of the peace
+treaty. They have opposed it from the beginning, and they will
+oppose it to the very end. Other organizations have publicly
+said this isn't about Israel. Thankfully this is not about
+Israel. This is what Elliott said earlier; this is not about
+America even giving our support. This is about their desire for
+change.
+ We have to be vigilant that a situation doesn't come, that
+it becomes about Israel and America. And I think we should all
+be quite worried that elements of the regime just last week
+tried to play the Israel card and the Jewish card, putting on
+Egyptian national television so-called Israeli spies, that
+evidently were provocateurs in the protest, or protestors that
+admitted to being trained by American Jewish organizations to
+overthrow Mubarak. This is all obviously poppycock, but it
+plays to the conspiratorial mindset, which many may have, and
+it is a sign of desperation on the part of the regime.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. The gentleman's
+time has expired. I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to Mr.
+Fortenberry, the vice chair of Africa, Global Health, and Human
+Rights Subcommittee.
+ Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you
+gentlemen for coming today. I believe it is very important that
+we stand by any people who are pursuing their highest
+aspirations. Now with that said, the doorway to a vibrant and
+sustainable democracy rests really on two pillars
+fundamentally. First is an inculturated understanding of the
+dignity and therefore rights of every person and secondly an
+understanding of the nature of responsible citizenship as it
+seeks to uphold the rule of law. Then from there flow the
+institutions of society that give rise to civil capacity and
+can sustain things like freedom of speech and freedom of
+religion and freedom of assembly and a vibrant democracy with
+free and fair elections.
+ The delicate question that is before us is, where is Egypt
+on that spectrum? Because without sufficiently developed
+institutions the danger or probability increases that this
+situation is exploitable by those who would use democracy to
+undermine it to pursue other ends. We had a discussion earlier
+as to what happened in Gaza. I heard your point, Mr. Craner,
+but at the same time, if you are allowing democracy to be used
+by those who are going to act antithetically to it, you may end
+up in a situation which is much worse off.
+ With that said, again we want to stand by people as they
+are pursuing their highest aspirations, but I think that is the
+narrow issue here. Where is Egypt in terms of civil capacity so
+that we increase the probability that this type of hopeful and
+good outcome can occur.
+ Mr. Abrams. Just one brief comment, Mr. Fortenberry, this
+is the measure of a terrible legacy of Hosni Mubarak, who had
+30 years to slowly, steadily build this civic culture and
+instead built a culture of suspicion and suppression and leaves
+soon, even on his own timetable, with having done none of it.
+ Clearly Tunisia is in a better situation. Tunisia, with
+$8,500 per capita income and roughly 85-80 percent literacy.
+But I guess I would say we are who we are. I mean the people of
+Egypt are rising up and demanding this. And what perhaps we can
+help advise with is the kind of institutional protections that
+after all our own founders put in because they wondered whether
+we had the civic culture to do this yet and they were very
+mistrustful of majorities. So maybe we can help as they think
+through what a new Constitution would look like.
+ Mr. Craner. In terms of civil capacity, there are many
+countries less developed that have become democratic. And I
+always use the example of Mongolia, quite an isolated place,
+with not a lot of civil capacity, Mali in Africa. The list--I
+could cite you a long list, but in terms of civil capacity----
+ Mr. Fortenberry. Are a comparable in terms of----
+ Mr. Craner. Much less, much less, what would you call civil
+capacity in terms of the understanding of the issues you were
+talking about that have been able to come to the fore and
+become democratic. I think one of the issues in Egypt is from
+where we sit it is going to be hard to slow what is going on in
+Egypt. I think we can help shape it as it moves forward. We can
+even hasten it moving forward. But at the least we can do is
+shape it. But I think it will be very, very hard for us to slow
+it.
+ Mr. Fortenberry. One of the problems with analogies and
+this is clear is that perhaps you didn't have entities as well
+organized as the Muslim Brotherhood is going to reject
+fundamental aspects of what are going to provide the foundation
+for vibrant democracy as we project on it. I think that is
+where it falls short, but I understand your point.
+ Mr. Craner. I would also point you, however, to some of
+the--Muslim Brotherhood is unique certainly in Egypt, but there
+have been other countries where there have been well organized
+entities that went into elections and were defeated. And I
+think here of the former communist parties.
+ Mr. Fortenberry. I just picked up your language when you
+said hopefully moderates will come out well. Again that points
+to this delicate situation that we are now in and we don't
+exactly know where we are.
+ Mr. Craner. But we need to get in and shape it and not just
+be passive spectators, which is essentially what we are doing
+right now.
+ Mr. Satloff. Just one brief analytical distinction.
+Egyptians are generally religiously conservative, but we should
+not equate that with membership in the Muslim Brotherhood,
+which is an ideological party with political goals. We
+shouldn't believe that all Egyptians if they are not liberals
+they are necessarily Brotherhood members. We would fall into
+their trap.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. The gentleman's time has
+expired. I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to my Florida
+colleague, Mr. Deutch, for his questions.
+ Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Satloff, you said
+just a couple minutes ago that this is not about Israel or
+America, this is about what is happening in Egypt. But I would
+like to focus on what is happening in Egypt as it relates to
+the two, particularly for people, for Egyptian citizens. If you
+could discuss the implications on the ground, not just with
+regard to the border with Egypt, but the broader implications
+should the next government choose to abrogate that peace treaty
+with Israel. What does it means in terms of trade, what does it
+mean in terms of exports and qualifying industrial zones? If
+you could speak to that so that we have a better sense of what
+the thinking is and how it might play out.
+ Mr. Satloff. Thank you, Congressman. I think we have gotten
+quite used to the idea of Egypt and Israel linked in peace,
+even if it is a cold peace, and the world in which we live is
+shaped by that. But to take that out and change that is huge.
+Israel for the last 30 years has operated on the assumption it
+didn't need to deploy a single soldier on the Egyptian border.
+That has opened up huge opportunities for Israel. It has
+enabled them to lower their defense spending, enabled them to
+move elsewhere, take other risks for peace. A change such as
+this, if it convinces the Israelis they have to rethink border
+security with Egypt, if they have to worry that the Egyptians
+are goings to militarize the Sinai, if they have to worry that
+the Gaza border is now going to become free flow for weapons
+with the Egyptian connivance instead of against Egypt's
+efforts, this changes everything that is possible for peace and
+security in this region.
+ Egypt obviously will lose its American support if it severs
+its relationship. It will look for other partners, probably
+more nefarious partners than the United States. The Suez Canal
+becomes subject to possible closure or selective opening to
+various partners. The Egyptians, for example, have permitted
+the Israelis to transit their own submarines through the Suez
+Canal. The idea that in an era beyond peace that this would be
+possible is difficult to imagine.
+ So there is a longer list, I could go on.
+ Mr. Deutch. Well, if could you speak first to the nefarious
+partners that might be out there should this decision be made
+and secondly to the specific statement by the Muslim
+Brotherhood over the weekend that they recognize why it is in
+Egypt's interest to continue the peace treaty. Do we take them
+at their word as well? If not, again speak to who else might be
+out there that would be looking for this opportunity?
+ Mr. Satloff. The statements I have seen by representatives
+of the Muslim Brotherhood are not supportive of the peace
+treaty. Actually I think the official position is they want the
+peace treaty to be up for a new vote by a new Parliament and a
+national referendum on whether it should be sustained.
+ In terms of more nefarious possible partners for Egypt,
+well, there are plenty of candidates of countries that wouldn't
+have our conditionality, wouldn't have our desire for popular,
+for civic rights. Whether they are--they may be friends of ours
+even, like the Saudis and others, but they are not going to
+have democracy as part of their portfolio. And then there are
+more nefarious characters, whether it is the Chinese, the
+Venezuelans or other, that would come up with $1 billion to
+pluck the prize of Egypt from us, and I think it would be a
+price for them well spent.
+ Mr. Deutch. Mr. Craner, you are nodding. Other thoughts, if
+you could broaden that discussion.
+ Mr. Craner. I think Rob was very, very comprehensive in his
+answer to you. I think the other thing Egyptians would have to
+think about as they move that is their own economy. Nobody is
+going to want to invest in an area that looks like a war zone,
+which that may if that happens.
+ The second thing the Egyptian military has to think about
+is whatever else you can say about the United States economy
+versus China and all this stuff, we continue to have the
+world's best military, and they would have to decide if they
+wanted to take Iranian weapons, Russian weapons, Chinese
+weapons, and Chinese-Russian training and then try to go to war
+with Israel.
+ Mr. Deutch. And then finally, Mr. Abrams, if you could just
+speak again to the Muslim Brotherhood and the relationship with
+Hamas, funding for Hamas, those direct ties and our concerns as
+this goes forward.
+ Mr. Abrams. Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood
+internationally and the Mubarak regime has always been quite
+afraid of the link between the two. The question would really
+be about the Hamas border with Egypt, which is the Sinai-Gaza
+border. The Egyptian Government has done a mixed job. I mean,
+if you ask Israelis, there are tons of weapons that float in
+through those tunnels. It is hard to say the Egyptian
+Government couldn't have stopped more of them had it really
+been trying to. So it isn't as if we go from a golden age now
+to an age of trouble. But there is no question that one of the
+questions that the Muslim Brotherhood is going to have to
+answer is what do you want the relationship between the new
+Government of Egypt and Hamas to be?
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Deutch. Thank
+you, Mr. Abrams.
+ Mr. Rivera, my Florida colleague, is recognized for 5
+minutes.
+ Mr. Rivera. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. One of my
+concerns or one of my main concerns in this crisis is the
+impact on U.S. interests vis-a-vis Israel. I have one question
+first for Dr. Satloff and Secretary Abrams. Obviously the
+situation in Egypt is very much in flux, but regardless of what
+emerges American interests remain constant. It is imperative
+that Egypt today and throughout any political transition
+continues to honor its international obligations and play a
+positive role in the region. Specifically, Egypt must honor its
+commitment to peace with Israel as enshrined in the Camp David
+Accords and ensure the integrity of the Egyptian-Israel and
+Egyptian-Gaza borders.
+ So for Dr. Satloff, my question, what message should the
+United States be delivering to the parties regarding Egypt's
+peace with Israel?
+ Mr. Satloff. Very simply, Congressman, the United States
+should be public and private in saying the type of Egypt that
+we can support is only the type of Egypt that fulfills its
+international commitments, that we cannot support an Egypt that
+flouts or violates its fundamental international commitments.
+That applies to the military, it applies to economic. This is
+the foundation of our relationship.
+ With the Israelis, we need to begin serious security
+conversations now about upgrading the United States-Israel
+strategic partnership. There are many things that we can do in
+concert in terms of border security, in terms of intelligence,
+and in terms of other items, and it should be seen that we are
+doing this so that the region understands that we recognize the
+shock to the Israeli security system and that we can do what we
+can to help cushion and assist the Israelis through the shock.
+ Mr. Rivera. And for Secretary Abrams, over the years the
+United States has sold a great deal of military equipment to
+Egypt. At the same time we are deeply committed to Israel's
+qualitative military edge, essentially Israel's ability to
+defend itself against any combination of conventional threats.
+Part of the calculus in providing weapons to Egypt was that it
+was committed to peace with Israel.
+ If Egypt's commitment toward peace with Israel changes, how
+should that affect future decisions about the sale and
+maintenance of weapon systems to the Egyptians?
+ Mr. Abrams. Mr. Rivera, I think we should be very clear
+with the new Government of Egypt that the building block for us
+is their international obligation, their support of peace in
+the region, and if they move away from that, our aid program is
+impossible. I think that we can do that privately at first,
+rather than browbeating them, but I think we need to make it
+very, very clear and make sure that the Egyptian army
+understands that it has been obligation to tell the civilians,
+to persuade the civilians, to talk to the new Parliament so
+that the national debate shows that it is in Egypt's interest,
+they are not doing this as a favor to us, not doing this as a
+favor to Israel. It is in Egypt's interest to keep those
+commitments.
+ Mr. Rivera. Mr. Craner, anything to add on either front?
+ Mr. Craner. Just that this large assistance package began
+with the Camp David Accords. If the Camp David Accords are no
+longer going to be operative, there is no need for the
+assistance.
+ Mr. Rivera. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I yield back
+the remainder of my time.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Rivera. Mr.
+Cicilline of Rhode Island is recognized for 5 minutes. Welcome.
+ Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and
+congratulations to you and thank you to the panel for a great
+presentation. A special welcome to Dr. Satloff; it is wonderful
+to see you.
+ I have really two issues that I would ask the panel to
+address. The first is just yesterday in the Providence Journal
+there was a headline, Egypt's Unrest Raises Oil Prices. And
+this seems to be another example of where our national security
+interests and our ability to wean ourselves from dependence on
+foreign oil intersect. And so my first question is really is
+there any reason to believe in the short term that there will
+be consequences to the oil supply here in this country, knowing
+that Egypt is not a big producer, but that lots of oil is
+transported.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Cicilline, can I interrupt you
+for 1 second?
+ Mr. Cicilline. Certainly.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, and we won't take away
+from your time. Mr. Berman and I have to go to the floor to
+handle the debate. And I will ask Mr. McCaul of Texas to take
+over the chair. And if we could start Mr. Cicilline's time
+again. Thank you very much.
+ Mr. Cicilline. So in light of this uncertainty in the
+region in the short term, is there likely to be any impact, and
+then add to that that 40 percent of natural gas consumed by
+Israel comes from Egypt, which I know the Muslim Brotherhood
+has already spoken out against, what are the implications in
+terms of energy? And I hope there will be a call to action on
+behalf of our country to develop a comprehensive energy policy
+that is serious about investing in clean energy and the
+development and production of renewable energy.
+ The second area I would like to hear your thoughts on is
+the issue of leadership of the revolution. It seems as if it is
+really organic and it is really the people of Egypt that are
+leading this revolution. And I think we have to be careful that
+even if we could identify the emerging leaders we have to walk
+this tightrope where we want to be sure that this is a decision
+of the Egyptian people, and so we can't be seen to have
+selected or endorsed new leadership.
+ On the other hand, it sounds like investments in democracy
+promotion would be a useful tool to help fuel that kind of
+development. The question really is, is it too late for this
+country in terms of our playing in that area because they are
+now in the midst of the revolution, or are there some
+strategies that can support the emerging democratic leadership,
+whoever that is?
+ Mr. Abrams. To say a word about energy, Mr. Cicilline, so
+far no, obviously the prices have risen because of uncertainty.
+But so far the Canal is intact and the Egyptian army seems to
+want to keep it that way.
+ There was a terrorist attack on the gas pipeline to Israel,
+and it is not working right now. It will take several more days
+to get it back online. The Israelis I think need to worry that
+Egyptian domestic politics may interfere in the medium term
+with their supplies. They do have supplies offshore and one of
+the things that has happened is it has changed a little bit the
+debate within Israel about the importance of those supplies and
+the need to get them online a lot faster.
+ I yield to my colleagues on the question of how we can help
+this democratic transition.
+ Mr. Satloff. Just a word about energy before that,
+Congressman, I think that now is the moment when we need to be
+talking very clearly with the Saudis and our Gulf partners
+about their excess capacity, which is significant and would be
+quite helpful right now to help ensure that oil prices, which
+is really speculation on the sense of fear and uncertainty,
+that oil prices don't take a dynamic of their own. Those
+governments are very angry at the United States for their
+perception that we threw Mubarak under the bus, which I think
+is incorrect, but so be it. We need to have a real serious
+strategic conversation with the Saudis and their partners about
+their use of excess capacity.
+ Mr. Craner. On the question----
+ Mr. Cicilline. And Dr. Satloff, on the balance of the
+question is it too late for us to implement some strategies to
+support emerging democratic leadership in Egypt?
+ Mr. Satloff. I will let my colleague Lorne comment in just
+a moment. I don't think it is ever too late for us to do what
+we can. And we have great institutions, such as the one Lorne
+directs and others, that have people on the ground that have
+been working quietly for years. Now is the moment really where
+we should be more active and do what we can to help liberals,
+moderates, anti-Islamists capture the political space which is
+beginning to open for them.
+ Mr. Craner. I wish we had more time on this before
+elections occur. The one good thing is that we and other
+groups, the National Democratic Institute included, have been
+able to have contact with folks there for a couple of years,
+less lately because our budgets were cut. So I don't think it
+is too late. One of the things I always tell folks to address
+the delicacy issue you are talking about is we have to
+understand it is their country and it is their fight. We cannot
+be leading them.
+ What we can do when we do this kind of work is to talk
+about how coalitions are formed without saying and here is your
+leader or what issues do you need to address without saying
+these are the issues and here are the solutions. One of the
+interesting things that has happened in the last 10 years is
+that many new democracies are interested in doing this kind of
+work. So, for example, the Tunisians are very interested in
+having people from Portugal, which began its democracy in 1975,
+and Serbia, which began its democracy in 1998. So it is not so
+much regarded as an American thing anymore when you are
+bringing in people from all over the world. It can be done. We
+can't do it passively, we need to get in there and start doing
+it.
+ The final thing I would say is for the opposition to
+understand what issues it is that the Egyptian people want
+addressed. I think if you go out there and say let's be more
+aggressive toward Israel or you go out there and say let's fix
+this economy, you are going to get different reactions.
+ Mr. Cicilline. Thank you very much. I yield back the
+balance of my time.
+ Mr. McCaul [presiding]. The Chair now recognizes himself
+for 5 minutes. We all support democracy. I think the concern a
+lot of us have is a power vacuum and who is going to fill that
+void in that power vacuum. There is also a great concern I know
+from other nations in the Middle East of what is going to
+happen to them and what ripple effect could potentially take
+place across the Middle East. Certainly countries like Jordan,
+Saudi Arabia, Yemen.
+ When you look at the history of who is to fill this void I
+think obviously the young intellectual, secular model is what
+we want, but then there is, as we have discussed the Muslim
+Brotherhood. When you look at the history, Mr. Qutb, the
+literary scholar, trained in the United States but then
+advocating violence. Mr. Zawahiri, the number two man to bin
+Ladin. Those are the elements that we are talking about. That
+raises great concern to me in terms of--I think we know the
+answer to this question, how it is going to play out, but that
+is a great cautionary concern I think that all of us have.
+ Dr. Satloff, you talked about Iran as well with the vacuum.
+So I have got a couple more questions. I just want to throw
+that out and see what response or commentaries you had on that.
+ Mr. Satloff. Congressman, in the current environment no one
+is suggesting that any other institution but the army fill that
+void. Actually our hope is that the army separates itself from
+the President and then fills the void and then opened up a
+transition, an irrevocable transition. But no responsible
+person is suggesting to hand over the keys of the country to a
+leaderless, amorphous group. Everyone hopes for an
+institutional change, and that is why if this does happen, if
+the army makes the choice, which it so far has been reluctant
+to do, then we may be on the right path.
+ Mr. McCaul. Any other comments? Mr. Abrams.
+ Mr. Abrams. You asked about the ripple effects. I would say
+about that is there have been some good ones in the sense that
+the Governor of Algeria announced that after 19 years the
+emergency law would be ended. The Government of Jordan, the
+King, announced that he has appointed a new Prime Minister with
+a mandate for reform. In Yemen the President announces he won't
+run again. So they are not going have a President for life,
+which is what they feared.
+ So to the extent that people can get ahead of the curve
+this will prove to be positive.
+ Mr. McCaul. Mr. Craner.
+ Mr. Craner. I think you are not yet seeing negative effects
+in any of the countries. I noted earlier if you are going to
+see effects it will probably be in the republics, not the
+monarchies for a variety of reasons. But I think these events
+drive home the point that President Bush made and that
+Secretary Clinton made in a speech in UAE and another one in
+Munich, that not only do they need to get ahead of the events,
+but we need to get ahead of these events.
+ Mr. McCaul. I agree with that. Is there something to learn
+from that? When we look the Turkey they have a secular model of
+government. Do we have--is there any benefit to examine that
+model in terms of applying it to Egypt?
+ Mr. Abrams. I would say it is a mixed model in the sense
+that for years and years it looked like the right model, the AK
+Party, democratic, moderate, but we have seen in the last year
+real steps by the Prime Minister against freedom of the press
+in Turkey. And so I think Turkey now becomes a worrying model
+for the direction of Egypt.
+ Mr. McCaul. And last question, El Baradei has been, and I
+was at a meeting with him in Vienna. He is a very impressive
+man and he seems to be the type that could be a consensus
+builder. What are your thoughts in terms of him emerging as a
+potential leader in Egypt?
+ Mr. Satloff. In the polling that we did just last week in
+Cairo, El Baradei came up quite negligible in public opinion
+support. The top ranked person was for better or for worse the
+current Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, who
+supports peace but isn't always such a friend of American
+interests in the broader Middle East.
+ Mr. McCaul. Mr. Craner.
+ Mr. Craner. Mr. El Baradei would be a transitional figure
+at best.
+ Mr. McCaul. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from
+Virginia, Mr. Connolly.
+ Mr. Connolly. I thank my friend. And welcome. I know it has
+been a long morning, and thank you all for being patient.
+ I have two questions. First, Mr. Abrams, to you. You quoted
+Tom Lantos: ``Does Egypt need more tanks or more schools?''
+Obviously a rhetorical question. You sound like a liberal
+Democrat. Thank you, in raising the question. But you also
+bemoaned a little bit the fact that other donors have visible
+projects they can point to, and the people can see the
+assistance is helping and we don't have so much of that.
+ The administration in which you served and the Senate in
+which I served actually consciously moved a lot of project-tied
+aid in Egypt to cash transfer because it made the client
+happier, but we paid a political price. I wonder if you want to
+comment on that in terms of in retrospect, did we make a
+mistake? And moving forward do we need to resist the temptation
+even though it takes long and it is clunky and it requires more
+people at USAID, but we pay a political price every time
+someone doesn't see the tangible benefit, in this case of the
+peace dividend.
+ Mr. Abrams. I agree and I think it was a mistake to do
+this. And we almost made an even larger mistake. The Mubarak
+regime has been pushing for probably 3 or 4 years now for
+some--sort of an endowment where the aid would be put into a
+giant pot where you and the Congress would lose all control
+going forward and for a while that was a popular proposal. I
+think it was blocked here on the Hill.
+ But I think what we see now is the error of having been so
+supportive of the Mubarak government. I would only add the
+usual statement is they were such great allies. Yes and no, you
+know there are Emirati forces fighting alongside us in
+Afghanistan. There are no Egyptian forces. There are others in
+the Arab world who have been much more helpful about bringing
+peace and democracy to Iraq after the war. President Mubarak
+was not helpful, and of course it is a very cold peace with
+Israel, under a regime, his regime, that propagated, not just
+anti-Israel, but terrible anti-Semitic feelings in Egypt.
+ Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Mr. Craner, you talked about the
+consequences of in a sense the vacuum. When you have an
+autocratic regime and you don't allow political space to be
+created for legitimate opposition that is capable of governing,
+this is what happens. And we aided and abetted that, maybe
+through circumstances, whatever. I would argue clearly it is
+also a legacy of the Cold War where we saw the world in such
+stark bipolar terms, we kind of lost a lot of stuff in the
+antithesis.
+ But moving forward, it is easier said than done, isn't it?
+I mean, you have got a friendly allied government, it may be
+autocratic, and here you are, whether it is the Republican
+Institute or the Democratic Institute or the U.S. State
+Department, mucking around with the opposition that they don't
+want you mucking around with. How do we forge a coherent policy
+that allows us to help create political space, especially when
+the governing regime does not want us to?
+ Mr. Craner. Because with every country, with every
+government there is what I would call an equation of relations
+with the United States. You have an X, Y, Z quotients. If X is
+the trade relationship, if Y the military relationship, you
+want to insert another quotient called democracy and human
+rights. And we shouldn't underestimate the power and how much
+attention people pay to us. And when they understand that the
+President and the Secretary of State highly value a particular
+quotient in the equation then they will pay attention to it.
+And skilled diplomats are able to use that. This is something I
+saw repeatedly in both the Bush-Baker and the Bush-Powell State
+Departments. Skilled diplomats can do both quite easily.
+ Mr. Connolly. Mr. Satloff, did you want to comment?
+ Mr. Satloff. No, I defer.
+ Mr. Connolly. Oh my gosh, I have 50 seconds left.
+ Elliot, I hope I see you at the synagogue. Thank you very
+much. You go to the synagogue in my neighborhood. Thank you all
+very much, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
+ Mr. McCaul. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from New
+York, Mr. Higgins.
+ Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
+ I think the Egyptian experience of the past several weeks
+raises a number of questions, a lot of contradictions. But also
+I don't know that enough has been made out of the generational
+influence, not only in Egypt but throughout the Middle East and
+North Africa, and I think in Egypt 25 or 50 percent of the
+population is under the age of 25. What is different today is
+that these regimes have been very good at repression. And there
+are now tools of collaboration, of organization that have are
+available to everybody in the world in this Web enabled world,
+and it is interesting that the Egyptian Government shut down
+the Internet, but so much information was out there before they
+did it, it essentially drove people into the streets, because
+that level of curiosity had been raised to a point where it was
+uncontrollable. I supposed that is both a good thing and a bad
+thing.
+ Mr. Satloff, you had indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood,
+you talk about contradictions, is an ideological party with
+very specific goals. Could you elaborate a little bit?
+ Mr. Satloff. Yes, Congressman. The Muslim Brotherhood was
+founded and retains its intention to Islamize society, to make
+Egyptian society first and other Muslim majority countries
+second, governed under Sharia law, Sharia law being the
+codified Muslim legal code. Now in some places the Muslim
+Brotherhood has spread. It started out in Egypt, it has spread
+in countries around the world. It takes different names in
+different places, like Hamas in the Palestinian arena, but it
+retains that ultimate goal. It has a variety of means toward
+that goal. At times it has used direct violence trying to
+assassinate Presidents and Prime Ministers. At other times it
+uses electoral politics, at other times is uses social welfare
+efforts to promote popularity, but it has never given up the
+goal. And the goal has only been compromised because of actions
+of the state. Namely, the state has repressed, thrown in jail
+its leaders, and it has been forced to give up certain aspects
+of its goal publicly and certain aspects of its means publicly.
+But I would argue that there is no fundamental change in the
+objective of the Muslim Brotherhood and we should be quite
+clear eyed about what that goal is, and it is very antithetical
+to our strategic interests and to our human rights and
+democracy interests.
+ Mr. Higgins. Is it possible to gauge the support for the
+Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt itself amongst the population? Is
+there a percentage that could be accurately applied relative to
+support amongst the popular----
+ Mr. Satloff. There is a common view among experts that it
+is somewhere about 20 or 30 percent. But none of us really know
+because the government has set up an electoral system which
+deprives all options other than supporting the brotherhood or
+supporting the regime. So we don't really know what the
+Brotherhood support is. I suspect it is in that ballpark, but
+it is certainly not a majority support among the Egyptian
+population. Here I just want to reaffirm the point I made
+earlier, we need to make a distinction between religiosity,
+people who pray and people who ascribe to a political ideology
+of compelling their compatriots to live under Islamic law. That
+is a very different approach.
+ Mr. Higgins. It seems like one of the reasons Egypt has
+historically supported the blockade of Gaza is because they
+wanted to ensure that Hamas remains Israel's problem and not
+their problem, which is indicative of a history of fearing, I
+presume, the Muslim Brotherhood which makes up Hamas.
+ This power vacuum, where do we suspect this thing is going
+to--how is this going to be filled? Anybody?
+ Mr. Abrams. The power vacuum in Cairo of course none of us
+know, and this is a key question as to whether the army can
+lead a steady but real transition to a new democratic system or
+not.
+ I do think one thing about Gaza: Initially the Egyptians
+wanted to have a lot more influence in Gaza and prevent a Hamas
+takeover. Once Hamas took over, they were very much afraid of a
+kind of infection between the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and
+the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Hamas. And they then began to
+enforce somewhat, haphazardly, they began to enforce a border.
+And there were some incidents where they arrested Hamas people
+and pushed them back over the border. But Mubarak I think was
+quite afraid of what the Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood cooperation
+could do.
+ Mr. Higgins. My time is up. Thank you, gentlemen.
+ Mr. McCaul. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
+Arkansas, Mr. Griffin.
+ Mr. Griffin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Abrams, my
+understanding is that the movement in Egypt is an organic one
+for the most part and there is potentially a power vacuum there
+and that Egypt historically has done a good job in dealing with
+some of the extreme groups, fringe groups. With all of that in
+mind, looking forward to the intermediate term, 5 years or so
+down the road, what do you see al-Qaeda trying to do, if
+anything? And I mention this, I know there hasn't been a lot of
+discussion of al-Qaeda, but clearly some critical people in the
+al-Qaeda organization have ties to Egypt. And then I see this
+Wall Street Journal editorial, could al-Qaeda hijack Egypt's
+revolution? And I know it is all sort of speculation, but I
+would like for you to comment on how credible that speculation
+is. It seems to me if we did have incomplete knowledge, looking
+in hindsight, that this was coming and it did sort of
+organically bubble up, if you will, looking forward, what do we
+know about al-Qaeda and their interests? And I would assume
+that there is no question they would have a desire to
+capitalize and exploit this, but there may be structural
+resource limitations on their ability to do that. Do you want
+to comment on that? I don't know if you've seen this article
+but just on the general premise.
+ Mr. Abrams. Mr. Griffin, I think it is something we should
+be worrying about because al-Qaeda tends to thrive when there
+is an ungoverned space, Somalia, Yemen, or when the hand that
+suppresses it is lifted. I am sure they are looking at Egypt
+and wondering whether the security forces that have been
+fighting them will start being--will start pulling back, and
+that could happen now. It can happen in the medium term if you
+get new governments of Egypt where it is not so popular to
+suppress al-Qaeda, where the people who are running the country
+are telling the security forces don't be so tough or make
+trouble, I don't want any incidents. Because if they move back
+and I am thinking about things like guarding their borders or
+airports and seaports, if they lessen or lower their guard
+against al-Qaeda, we know enough of al-Qaeda to know that they
+are constantly looking around and they will move into Egypt.
+ So I think it is something to worry about. It is one of the
+reasons that I think it is so important the army not sacrifice
+its position in Egypt to save Hosni Mubarak and get him a few
+more months, because we will need them to prevent exactly what
+you are I think rightly worried about.
+ Mr. Griffin. What I would also be interested in is to hear
+your comment on if al-Qaeda is looking at northern Africa as a
+whole and not just Egypt as a potential opportunity. Are they
+looking to recruit there for their fights elsewhere or do you
+believe they would be looking to infiltrate there and establish
+themselves? It seems to me we have done such a good job, the
+United States has, in fighting them, particularly in terms of
+depleting their operational resources that they may not have
+the ability to do everything that they might like to do. Would
+they be recruiting there for fights in Afghanistan and Iraq or
+would they be trying to move into these countries?
+ Mr. Abrams. I think the answer is both. There is now a
+thing called al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and I think we have seen
+or we have seen arrests in Morocco or arrests in Algeria. And
+they are both trying to recruit there and clearly have tried
+and succeeded in some cases in doing terrorist attacks in North
+Africa. So this is very much on their radar screen.
+ Mr. Griffin. I see that I am about out of time. I have
+about 30 seconds, if there is anything you would like to add.
+ Mr. Satloff. A couple of quick points. One, al-Qaeda has
+proved quite opportunistic. I am sure they are seeing the
+situation in Tunisia and Egypt as the fall of their enemies,
+not so much a rise of democracy, and this will invite their
+activity in these countries.
+ Secondly, we should note that even such people as the
+assassin of Sadat up at Zamur escaped from jail in Egypt over
+the last 2 weeks, and I think we should be quite concerned
+about the potential for these fringe movements taking hold
+again.
+ Mr. Griffin. Thank you.
+ Mr. McCaul. I want to thank the witnesses for their
+excellent testimony here today. Our members may have additional
+questions, and we ask that our witnesses consider follow-up
+answers to any questions that may be forwarded. Without
+objection, by unanimous consent members will have 5 days to
+submit questions in writing, which the committee will then
+forward to our witnesses.
+ Again, thank you, and this hearing is adjourned.
+ [Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
+
+
+RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EGYPT AND LEBANON: IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S. POLICY
+ AND ALLIES IN THE BROADER MIDDLE EAST, PART 2
+
+ ----------
+
+
+ THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2011
+
+ House of Representatives,
+ Committee on Foreign Affairs,
+ Washington, DC.
+ The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:35 a.m., in
+room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ileana Ros-
+Lehtinen (chairman of the committee) presiding.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. We thank the folks in the audience
+with the yellow T-shirts. They have loved ones or relatives or
+interested folks about what is going on in Camp Ashraf and the
+many violations against the freedom-loving Iranians there. And
+we certainly will keep working so that they get the protection
+they deserve from the Iraqi Government and from our U.S.
+Government as well. So we welcome you today.
+ After recognizing myself and the ranking member, Mr.
+Berman, for 7 minutes each for our opening statements, I will
+recognize the chairman and the ranking member of our
+Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia for 3\1/2\ minutes
+each for their statements.
+ We will then hear from our witness Deputy Secretary
+Steinberg. Thank you, sir, for joining us.
+ Following Mr. Steinberg's testimony, we will move to
+questions and answers from members under the 5-minute rule.
+ Without objection, the witness' prepared statement will be
+made a part of the record, and members may have 5 days to
+insert statements and questions for the record subject to
+length limitations of the rules. Thank you very much. So if we
+could have the clock begin now.
+ Yesterday, as you know, we heard from a distinguished panel
+of experts and former administration officials on the dramatic
+transformation that is currently taking place in Cairo, in
+Beirut, and beyond. There was general agreement on the need for
+the United States to send a clear signal of support to those
+freedom-loving Egyptians who renounce violence, who are
+committed to democratic governance, who respect the security
+and the sovereignty of all Egypt's neighbors. There were echoes
+of statements by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from
+this past weekend that the U.S. relationship is not just with
+one person, but rather with all of the Egyptian people as a
+whole.
+ Former Deputy National Secretary Advisor Elliot Abrams
+reiterated that Mubarak created the very situation that Israel
+and the United States now fear, and that Mubarak's statements
+that he will not run in Egypt's scheduled elections is too late
+to enable a smooth transition.
+ America's role should be to facilitate a post-Mubarak
+transition in order to avert future violence, and restore calm,
+and guard against the use of the transition process by
+nefarious elements such as the Muslim Brotherhood to directly
+or indirectly undermine Egypt's evolution to a democratic
+republic.
+ There is no evidence that a well-thought-out contingency
+plan existed in the event that Mubarak's government became
+unstable or collapsed. The Wall Street Journal reported that
+Middle East experts at a January 31 meeting asked National
+Security Council officials, ``Please tell me that you have
+contingencies in case Mubarak's regime collapses.'' The
+National Security Council reportedly admitted there were no
+such plans.
+ A February 2 report by foreignpolicy.com cites a senior
+administration official telling ABC that the administration was
+being compelled to change its strategy ``every 12 hours. First
+it was negotiate with the opposition. Then events overtook
+that. Then it was orderly transition. Then it was, you,
+Mubarak, and your son can't run, and now it is the process has
+to begin now.''
+ Turning to the Muslim Brotherhood, the New York Times
+reported on February 2 that ``White House staff members made
+clear that they did not rule out engagement with the Muslim
+Brotherhood as part of an orderly process according to one
+attendee.''
+ Engaging the Muslim Brotherhood must not be on the table.
+This also has implications for U.S. policy toward Lebanon,
+given statements last year by John Brennan, assistant to the
+secretary for homeland security and counterterrorism,
+describing Hezbollah's evolution from ``purely a terrorist
+organization'' to a militia, to what Mr. Brennan refers to as
+an organization that now has members within the Parliament and
+the Cabinet.
+ Has the State Department evaluated whether Lebanon now
+meets the statutory definition of a state sponsor of terrorism
+or a terrorist strength sanctuary, given Hezbollah control of
+that government? And what is the administration's stance on
+continuing to provide assistance to such a Lebanese Government?
+From Lebanon to Egypt, what is the administration's stance on
+the Muslim Brotherhood? Beyond the general parameters
+referenced in Deputy Secretary Steinberg's written statement
+that is in our packet, what are the specific components and
+contingencies of the U.S. strategy toward Egypt and for aiding
+in the transitional process? If a key U.S. goal is to prevent
+the Muslim Brotherhood from taking over, and the Muslim
+Brotherhood is well funded, then shouldn't U.S. policy seek to
+shift economic aid away from the Mubarak government and focus
+it on strengthening responsible, peaceful democratic voices?
+ The administration's initial approach to Egypt was clearly
+not keeping up with the priorities in its first years. While
+driving increases in the international affairs budget, the
+administration made significant cuts to total bilateral funding
+for democracy and governance programming. USAID even reportedly
+adopted a policy of only funding those organizations officially
+approved as NGOs by the Mubarak government. Repeated U.S.
+failure to enforce its own conditions and requirements on
+nonsecurity assistance to Egypt has compounded the problem.
+ So, Mr. Steinberg, what tangible economic or democratic
+reforms has the Government of Egypt undertaken as a result of
+the billions of dollars that we have provided in nonsecurity
+assistance throughout the last decades? What have we received
+in exchange?
+ This brings to mind two lessons on the Lebanese debacle
+that we are currently facing. The first is that the elections
+themselves are meaningless unless they are supplemented with
+democratic institutions. Hezbollah's ascendance in Lebanon was
+facilitated by the failure of responsible nations to insist on
+changing a Syrian-dictated electoral law and subsequent
+regulation prior to holding elections in the aftermath of the
+2005 Cedar Revolution. Clearer standards for participation in
+elections and institutions must be both articulated and
+implemented to ensure that destructive actors are not afforded
+the opportunity to hijack an incipient democratic process.
+ The second lesson is we cannot afford to continue to pursue
+a myopic, personality-based policy that relies on stability
+over institutional reform. In Lebanon, we had a short-term
+policy based on maintaining stability, and we vested
+significant political capital with both Rafiq Hariri and, in
+the wake of his assassination and ascendance of the pro-Western
+March 14 bloc, his son Saad Hariri. Basing the next round of
+elections on existing Egyptian law and regulations without
+clear standards for participation and a democratic
+institutional framework is a recipe for disaster.
+ And turning lastly to the role of the Egyptian Army, it has
+been reported that the United States is working behind the
+scenes to impress upon the Egyptian military the need to
+protect protestors and support a peaceful government
+transition. And I will be asking you questions on the
+administration's view on the security assistance to Egypt.
+ So thank you very much for being here.
+ And I am so proud and pleased to turn to my ranking member,
+Mr. Berman of California.
+ [The prepared statement of Chairman Ros-Lehtinen follows:]
+
+
+
+ Mr. Berman. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
+ I am just getting word that probably a lot of people are
+getting that--except possibly the Deputy Secretary of State--
+that according to NBC News and a number of other sources,
+including quotes from the new Prime Minister of Egypt, that
+Hosni Mubarak is to step down following an all-day meeting of
+the country's Supreme Military Council. The army said all of
+the protestors demands would be met and a further statement was
+expected to be made later Thursday clarifying the situation.
+Mubarak was also due to address the nation.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. If I can interrupt. We will start
+your time again.
+ The Chair would like to remind the audience members that no
+disturbance of the committee proceedings are allowed, and if
+there is no order, we will ask for you to be removed from the
+room according to House rules.
+ Mr. Berman's time will now begin.
+ Mr. Berman. Thank you, Madam Chair.
+ Yesterday I made a fairly detailed opening statement on the
+rapidly evolving events in Egypt as well as developments in
+Lebanon. Today I would like to focus on just one aspect, the
+most immediately relevant aspect of the democratic transition
+in Egypt, and that is the issue of when that transition will
+actually begin. We may have just had an answer on that.
+ But on February 1, President Obama said that a transition
+in Egypt must be meaningful, peaceful and begin now. At this
+point, however, prior to my reading about this, I felt that we
+were still waiting for that beginning. There have been some
+important announcements, the decision that neither Hosni
+Mubarak, Gamal Mubarak, nor Omar Suleiman would run for the
+Presidency in September, but nothing meaningful up until now
+has actually happened, nothing that could be considered a break
+with business as usual as seen by the Egyptian regime.
+ Madam Chairman, the transition needs substance. If current
+Egyptian leaders are reluctant to give it that substance, then
+the administration needs to give it a major push by setting out
+its own timetables and targets. The transition needs to be
+orderly, to be sure, but foremost it actually needs to happen.
+ Both the regime and the opposition need to see defining
+actions so that each begins to make what President Obama called
+the psychological break from the past. Any number of tangible
+actions would serve that purpose, whether it be ending the
+emergency law, the decision by President Mubarak to hand over
+effective power to his Vice President, a decision by the regime
+to bring credible opposition members into a transition
+government, clear indications that a new Constitution will be
+written and implemented and will ensure the provision of free
+and fair elections, the ability of secular parties to organize,
+the presence of monitors, the presence of international
+observers, and the kind of both print and television freedom
+that allows all parties and all voices to be heard during that
+kind of a campaign.
+ This type of concrete action needs to happen for many
+reasons, but primarily for the benefit of the Egyptian people.
+The Egyptian regime needs to know that it cannot dawdle or
+simply go through the motions of democratic change without any
+intention of genuinely transitioning to democracy. If delay is
+its tactic, it will reap a whirlwind at home, and it will leave
+Congress little choice but to take action. In other words, no
+slow walking.
+ When this crisis broke out, I emphasized that I favored
+continuing our security assistance program, but the duration of
+that program depended on whether the military played a
+constructive role in the democratic transition. That is still
+my position. But our patience, mine, that of my colleagues, has
+limits. Given the military's influence over the regime, a
+regime that was born in the military and whose entire
+leadership is composed of military men, the democratic
+transition will happen if and only if the military plays that
+constructive role.
+ So, Mr. Secretary, we are very glad to see you here. We
+have great respect for what you have been doing in a number of
+areas, but I am hoping when we finish this hearing, we will
+have a sense from you of when you think the democratic
+transition in Egypt will begin--it may have been helped by some
+of this news--and how we know it has begun, and what our
+administration intends to do to make sure that it begins if not
+now, then very, very soon.
+ Thank you.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Berman.
+ And I am pleased to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the chairman of
+our Middle East Subcommittee, Mr. Chabot.
+ Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you for
+holding these timely and important hearings again today.
+ I look forward to hearing from our distinguished guest
+Secretary Steinberg about the situation in the Middle East,
+which continues to unfold even as we speak, as the ranking
+member indicated, with the news on Mubarak today.
+ I think it is safe to say that the developments that
+continue to sweep across the Middle East and North Africa
+really did surprise many, but for years analysts had called
+attention to the ills of the region--a lack of respect for even
+the most basic human rights in many instances, like freedom of
+speech, freedom of assembly, and fair and free elections--as a
+potentially dangerous source of discontent, but it was ignored.
+They pointed to the widespread poverty and the aggressive
+economic policies instituted by dictators who were out of touch
+with the plights of their respective populations.
+ They did not, however, predict that one 26-year-old street
+vendor's desperate act of defiance would initiate a wave of
+antiregime protests that are shaking the very foundations of
+the political order in the Middle East. Even those countries in
+which protests have not yet erupted look at countries like
+Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan, nervously wondering if they
+themselves will be next.
+ For years we have also been told something else. We have
+been told that the Middle East is a region that is not ready
+for democracy. Indeed, save a handful of exceptions, the
+democracy deficit in the region had all become but a permanent
+assumption upon which far too much U.S. policy was based. I say
+``had'' because over the past weeks, the people of the Middle
+East by taking to the streets, have proclaimed loudly to the
+leaders and to the world that they share the same principles
+that we cherish. They have told us that the right to life,
+liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not stop at the
+water's edge.
+ While these developments are very exciting, there is a dark
+side, which is a cause for concern. The specter of radical
+Islamist groups which exploit every opportunity to seize power
+is lost on no one. In Egypt, for over 30 years President
+Mubarak has crushed every moderate secular political party that
+could pose a challenge to his party, the National Democratic
+Party. The only movement which managed to survive is the Muslim
+Brotherhood, which, among other aspirations, has declared its
+desire to reconsider Egypt's peace treaty with Israel as well
+as its desire to impose Sharia law on the Egyptian population.
+ President Mubarak, however repressive he may have been, was
+a close ally to the United States in the region and was
+especially helpful to us in fighting the global war on terror.
+In his absence, and as Egypt enters a period of transition, we
+must do all that we can to ensure that Egypt emerges from its
+current crisis with strong and democratic institutions of
+government, institutions that will respect the rights of women,
+uphold past treaties and agreements like those with our ally
+Israel, and not exploit the pillars of democratic governments
+like elections to assume the power only to abolish those very
+pillars. We must do all we can to help support the development
+of these institutions and to avoid one man, one vote, one time.
+ Preventing the Muslim Brotherhood from coming to power must
+be a leading priority as we revisit our policy toward Egypt.
+The quiet diplomacy that the United States has been engaging in
+so far may be helpful in dealing with the Mubarak regime, but
+it does nothing to assure the people of Egypt that we
+sympathize with their cause. As one of our witnesses yesterday
+pointed out, many Egyptians are totally unaware of the
+nonmilitary aid that we have given them.
+ So again, I commend you, Madam Chair, for holding this
+hearing. We obviously want to avoid a situation in which the
+Egyptian population looks at us as having bankrolled President
+Mubarak while completely ignoring them.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
+ And the ranking member, Mr. Ackerman, for 3\1/2\ minutes.
+ Mr. Ackerman. Thank you, Madam Chair.
+ Until recently, and unlike its Arab neighbors, Lebanon had
+a democratically elected government that should have had a
+mandate to govern, but like all of its regional neighbors
+except Israel, Lebanon has suffered from a powerful and
+unaccountable element of its society acting above and beyond
+the law.
+ What was different in the Lebanese case was that this
+unaccountable few didn't occupy or use the institutions of the
+state in order to coerce, in order to repress, in order to
+dominate their political opponents. Instead, they just
+threatened them and then killed them.
+ No one should forget that before the current crisis, before
+the insurrection of May 2008, before the Presidential
+succession crisis and the lockout of Parliament, Hezbollah and
+its Iranian and Syrian allies engaged in a campaign of
+assassinations against Lebanese parliamentarians and
+journalists that began in 2005 with the murder of former Prime
+Minister Rafiq Hariri.
+ Long before the recent backroom coup, Hezbollah set itself
+above the law and outside the reach of the government.
+Hezbollah has for years systematically weakened Lebanon's
+Government and continually undermined Lebanon's sovereignty. It
+has made Lebanon a regional time bomb by deploying more than
+40,000 Syrian and Iranian artillery rockets and advanced
+surface-to-surface missiles all aimed at Israel and all in
+order to shield Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program.
+ Tragically, the people of Lebanon are now hostages. Like
+the captive nations of Eastern Europe during the Cold War,
+their hearts are free, but their government has colluded with a
+foreign power to put them in chains.
+ The United States must continue to advocate for Lebanon's
+sovereignty and for the restoration of a legitimate government.
+We must continue to support and sustain the Special Tribunal
+for Lebanon and keep faith with all of the Lebanese people who
+want justice for their murdered countrymen and their former
+Prime Minister. America must continue to insist on the
+implementation of all relevant U.N. Security Council
+resolutions, and we must speak out clearly against the flood of
+illegal and destabilizing Syrian and Iranian arms going into
+Lebanon.
+ And finally, we need to be clear with the Government of
+Lebanon that it bears the burden of demonstrating that it truly
+serves the people of Lebanon, and that it will keep peace
+inside Lebanon and on Lebanon's borders, and that it is not and
+will not either be a flunky for the ayatollahs in Tehran or for
+the dictator in Damascus. Until there is clear evidence that
+Beirut has made these choices, I believe we have no other
+alternative but to suspend all of our assistance programs to
+Lebanon. We have many urgent priorities in the Middle East.
+Helping Iran, helping Syria, and helping Hezbollah maintain a
+facade of Lebanese independence is not one of them.
+ Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back the balance.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Ackerman.
+ The Chair is now pleased to welcome our witness. James B.
+Steinberg is the Deputy Secretary of State, serving as the
+principal deputy to Secretary Clinton. Appointed by President
+Obama, he was confirmed by the Senate on January 28, 2009, and
+sworn in by the Secretary the next day.
+ Prior to his appointment in the Obama administration, Mr.
+Steinberg served as the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of
+Public Affairs and the vice president and director of the
+foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institute.
+ From December 1996 to August 2000, Mr. Steinberg served as
+Deputy National Security Advisor to President Bill Clinton. Mr.
+Steinberg also has held numerous other posts in the State
+Department and on Capitol Hill.
+ Deputy Secretary Steinberg, thank you for attending, and I
+would kindly remind you to keep your oral testimony to no more
+than 5 minutes. And without objection, your written statement
+will be inserted into the record.
+ Welcome.
+
+ STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES B. STEINBERG, DEPUTY
+ SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
+
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Madam Chairman. And let me begin
+on behalf of Secretary Clinton to congratulate you on taking
+the gavel here and to express how much we look forward to
+working with you and Ranking Member Berman and all of the
+members of the committee, and express appreciation for holding
+this timely hearing.
+ Last month in Doha, Secretary Clinton challenged the
+leaders of the Middle East to give greater voice to their
+people. As the region confronts a potent combination of
+demographic and technological changes, rampant unemployment,
+and in too many cases the denial of universal rights and
+freedoms, she warned the status quo was unsustainable.
+ In recent weeks this dynamic has given rise to
+demonstrations across the region and changes in Tunisia,
+Jordan, and Yemen, and, of course, sparked the dramatic
+developments in Egypt that, along with the events in Lebanon,
+are the focus of today's hearing.
+ In such an environment, it is more important than ever that
+America works both with the people and the governments to
+democratize and open up political systems, economies, and
+societies. As the Secretary said just a few days ago in Munich,
+these are her words, ``This is not simply a matter of idealism.
+This is strategic necessity.''
+ Change will emerge differently in response to different
+circumstances across the region, but our policies and our
+partnerships are guided by a few consistent principles. We
+stand for universal values, including freedom of association,
+assembly, and speech. We oppose violence as a tool for
+political coercion, and we have spoken out on the need for
+meaningful change in response to the demands of the people.
+ American administrations of both parties have been
+conveying this message to Arab leaders publicly and privately
+for many years, and have also sought cooperation on crucial
+priorities such as counterterrorism, Iran's nuclear program,
+and the peace process. But these are not mutually exclusive or
+even contradictory. Recent events have reinforced the fact that
+absent freedom and democratic progress, the public support
+needed to sustain progress on common goals cannot be achieved.
+Changes must come, but we must be mindful the transitions can
+lead to chaos and new forms of intolerance or backslide into
+authoritarianism.
+ We are working wherever we can to ensure that political
+transitions are deliberate, inclusive and transparent, and we
+expect all who take part to honor certain basic commitments,
+because, as President Obama said in his Cairo speech, elections
+alone do not make true democracy.
+ One constant in a changing region is unwavering support for
+Israel's security. We continue to believe that the best path to
+long-term security for Israel and the region is the committed
+pursuit of comprehensive peace. By working for orderly
+transitions, we believe we can help ensure Israel's long-term
+security, and we will be vigilant against attempts to hijack
+the legitimate impetus for domestic reform to advance
+extremism.
+ Egypt today is undergoing a remarkable transition, and
+given Egypt's leadership and influence, its peace with Israel,
+and our long-standing partnership, the stakes are high. We have
+all been transfixed by the heroic images from Tahrir Square of
+young and old, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, gathering
+to lay claim to universal rights enjoyed in democratic
+societies around the world. And as the President has said,
+Egypt is not going back to the way it was.
+ We have declared publicly and privately that a peaceful,
+orderly, and prompt transition must begin without delay, and it
+must make immediate, irreversible progress toward free and fair
+elections.
+ We set out key principles to ensure that the transition
+remains peaceful. We made clear our support for human rights,
+including expression, association and assembly, freedom of the
+press. We have condemned violence against peaceful protestors,
+reporters and human rights activists, and we have underlined
+the need for Egypt's military to remain a force for stability.
+We are urging Egypt's Government and opposition to engage in
+serious, inclusive negotiations to arrive at a timetable, game
+plan, and path to constitutional political reforms. And as they
+do, we will support principles, processes, and institutions,
+not personalities. The desire for an orderly transition may not
+be a pretext for backsliding and stalling.
+ Another vital message we are sending to all who take part
+in Egypt's political future is the fundamental need to honor
+Egypt's historic peace treaty with Israel. As Egypt builds
+democratic institutions after the recent unrest and also
+contends with the economic challenges that helped to cause it,
+we will continue to extend a hand in partnership and friendship
+to the American people, and we will act now, as we have done in
+the past, to support civil society, nongovernmental
+organizations, democracy groups, and economic recovery. As the
+transition unfolds, we will tailor our support to engage and
+nurture it.
+ In Lebanon, a very different situation is unfolding. Last
+month Hezbollah, backed by Syria, used threats of violence to
+undermine the collapse of the Lebanese Government. We have
+worked with the international community with one voice to urge
+the next Lebanese Government to support the Special Tribunal,
+to honor its international obligations, and refrain from
+retribution against former officials.
+ We intend to judge the next Lebanese Government by its
+deeds, mindful of the circumstances that brought it about. We
+will be watching Prime Minister Mikati to see whether he makes
+good on his public pledge to build a broad-based government
+that represents all sections of Lebanese society. The Lebanese
+people deserve better than a false choice between justice for
+the murder of their Prime Minister and stability for their
+country.
+ If I could just conclude, Madam Chairman, by observing,
+without commenting specifically on the recent reports that you
+have referenced, that what is critical as we see this unfolding
+dynamic is that we remain consistent in our principles and the
+values of interest that we bring forward, while remaining
+nimble to adapt to emerging circumstances. It is a little bit
+like having a good game plan for the game, but also knowing
+when to call an audible. And I think that is what we are seeing
+as we go forward here, a consistent approach that identifies
+U.S. interests and values, but adapts to the circumstances and
+preserves our long-term interests.
+ And I look forward to your questions.
+ [The prepared statement of Mr. Steinberg follows:]
+
+
+
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so very much, sir.
+ And before yielding my time to Congresswoman Buerkle, I
+wanted to bring to your attention, sir, a problem that we had
+regarding the YouCut debate on the floor yesterday not related
+to the subject of this morning's hearing.
+ But yesterday morning, less than 2 hours before floor
+consideration, we received a letter from the State Department
+opposing the YouCut proposal to instruct the U.N. to return
+$179 million to the United States because of overpayments we
+had made to the U.N. Tax Equalization Fund, a surplus that the
+U.N. itself admitted that was payable to the United States.
+ Your Department's letter stated for the first time ever
+that the current TEF surplus is now approximately 80 million,
+so there is a discrepancy there. So if it is true, that means
+the Department of State had already given away $100 million
+owed back to the U.S. taxpayers. And we have been asking for
+this information for the past 3 months and have been
+stonewalled by the State Department. The U.N. cannot redirect
+this surplus fund without instructions from the United States.
+ So I have some questions that I would like to get written
+responses from you by Thursday, February 17, about how this was
+handled, because the way that this matter was handled raises
+serious concerns in my mind about the management and the candor
+of the Department of State. So I would appreciate it when my
+staff hands you that letter, if we could get that written
+response.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I would be happy to provide that.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, sir.
+ I am so pleased to yield to Congresswoman Buerkle of New
+York, who serves on the Subcommittee on Terrorism,
+Nonproliferation, and Trade as the vice chair.
+ Ms. Buerkle. Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for
+the opportunity this morning to address Mr. Steinberg.
+ Mr. Steinberg, thank you for being here this morning.
+ Throughout the course of the opening statements, we have
+heard from many of the members talking about the concern that
+the Muslim Brotherhood will step in if and when President
+Mubarak steps down. And really the key being is this something
+that the administration is making a priority of, preventing the
+Muslim Brotherhood from stepping in when that void occurs? And
+then beyond that, if it is a priority, what is the strategy of
+this administration to prevent that from happening?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you very much for the question.
+ I think that what we have focused on is some set of
+principles that we apply to what we expect to happen during
+this transition, because as I said, we recognize that these
+transitions can be difficult, and they can lead to
+unpredictable results. And so by focusing on those expectations
+and conditions, the need for an inclusive process that respects
+not only the need for elections, but also the institutions that
+protects the rights of minorities, that makes sure that, as
+things move forward, that individuals of different religions,
+of different perspectives are allowed to be part of the process
+is quite critical. And we want to make sure that the process is
+not hijacked by extremists or those who do not deeply believe
+in the open and tolerant and democratic process that we want.
+ The process itself is one for the Egyptians to decide, but
+as we engage with whatever government emerges there, we will be
+guided by those principles.
+ Ms. Buerkle. If you could, Mr. Steinberg, can you elaborate
+a little bit on this inclusive process, some of the specifics,
+the strategy that the administration will put forward?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Again, I think what is important is that
+this be a process that is driven by the Egyptians themselves.
+But what we made clear to the Government of Egypt is that we
+expect that the full range of voices, not ones that are simply
+friendly to the government itself, are allowed to participate,
+and particularly the voices of the individuals who have been
+protesting peacefully on the street and are asking for
+democratic change are brought in and that different voices are
+heard, that legitimate perspectives from civil society
+participate in these discussions. The format is one that the
+Egyptian people themselves have to develop. But that is the
+kind of approach that we support.
+ Ms. Buerkle. And if I may just follow up with that. How do
+you anticipate the United States of America being engaged in
+that process? How do you see that unfolding? Where will you be
+involved in the process?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think our first role has been to support
+those voices, and we have done that through our assistance
+programs. I think that it is important to recognize, as a
+number of others have raised this question, that we have a
+variety of ways of being involved in supporting civil society
+voices, and that while there has been a focus on some of our
+assistance programs under the ESF, there are other programs
+through our democracy programs and through our Middle East
+Peace Initiative and metric programs that we have other ways of
+supporting these democratic voices, which we have done.
+ So we want to support them and give them the capacity to
+participate effectively, and then we want to make clear in our
+advocacy with the Egyptian Government that these are voices
+that need to be heard. But I think it is not for the United
+States to be in the meetings themselves. We want this to be a
+process that is driven by the Egyptian people, by the
+legitimate forces in Egyptian society.
+ Ms. Buerkle. One last question. Do you believe if you
+follow this process that you just outlined for us that that
+will be sufficient for the United States--or to keep the Muslim
+Brotherhood from stepping in? Is that going to be a sufficient
+strategy to prevent that from happening?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think the key here, as I said in my
+opening remarks, is to have a clear set of principles which
+says what we expect and what, from our perspective, is an
+acceptable outcome for a new government moving forward, not
+just for our interests, although our interests are critical
+here, but also for the interests of the Egyptian people, and
+then to judge that as events emerge. And I think we need to,
+rather than trying to anticipate potential outcomes, be
+adaptive enough and responsive enough so we recognize, as we
+say, so we can identify concerns as they emerge, be vigilant,
+and make sure there we flag potentially dangerous emerging
+trends.
+ And I think that is what we have tried to do here, which is
+part of the reason why we focused on the need for an orderly
+process, to make sure that it is not hijacked by voices which
+in the name of democracy are going to set up an intolerant
+regime.
+ Ms. Buerkle. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg.
+ I yield back, Madam Chairman.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Congressman.
+ I am pleased to yield to my friend, the ranking member, Mr.
+Berman of California.
+ Mr. Berman. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
+ And thank you, Secretary Steinberg, for your testimony and
+your leadership here.
+ I would like to follow up on Ms. Buerkle's initial
+question: What is the administration's position regarding the
+participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the transition and
+then subsequent governance? I certainly agree that in the end
+the Egyptian people are going to decide this question.
+ There is an article in the current Egyptian Constitution
+requiring that religion be kept out of politics. Turkey has had
+a similar provision in its Constitution.
+ Does the administration have a view as to whether Egypt
+should retain that principle in the next phase of its
+governance?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Mr. Berman, I think what is important is
+that the next government respect the kind of democratic
+principles that we talked about, which is a commitment to
+democracy, but not just for one election, but for all of the
+fabric of democracy. Open institutions. Open debate. Tolerance
+of diversity and religious minorities. An ability of people to
+pursue different paths free of harassment. A recognition that
+you have to have a vibrant civil society.
+ There are different ways the Constitutions can embody that,
+different ways in which countries allow religion to play a role
+in our lives. We know, for example, even in our friends and
+allies in Europe, some have roles for religion in societies.
+ So I think you can't have an absolute rule about exactly
+how that applies, but it is very clear that we need to have--
+and we will be clear in our own mind that allowing this to
+become a state or a government that is intolerant, that does
+not provide an opportunity for the free, full expression of
+religious rights, of minority rights, or freedom for all of the
+different voices in Egyptian society is very important.
+ And what is encouraging is if you look at the people who
+are out in Tahrir Square, what you are seeing is exactly that,
+Christians and Muslims, people from different religions and
+backgrounds and different viewpoints on the role of Islam in
+society. And that is what needs to be preserved, and that is
+something that we feel would be important in any Constitution
+that would be adopted by a future government.
+ Mr. Berman. I have supported the administration's decision
+not to suspend the assistance program up until now, but I
+noticed that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs back on
+January 28 said the United States will be reviewing our Egypt
+assistance posture based on events that take place in the
+coming days.
+ Is that review ongoing, and what is the nature of that
+review? Under what circumstances would the administration
+consider suspending aid to Egypt?
+ And then just an observation that I would recommend that
+the administration look toward the whole issue of export
+controls on things like tear gas canisters, items that are
+mostly relevant to the suppression of peaceful protestors. I
+think there would be some value in reviewing and perhaps
+eliminating licenses on those kinds of items for the interim
+period.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Mr. Berman, I think you would expect and we
+do always keep under constant review our assistance programs
+not just for Egypt, but elsewhere. Congressman Ackerman raised
+concerns about Lebanon, and I want to assure him that we do the
+same there because we have to be able to be responsive to
+ongoing events. And I won't suggest that there aren't some
+circumstances where events may arrive where we would have to
+change our approach, but what we have focused on here as events
+have been emerging in Egypt is how to encourage this
+transition, how to use our influence to try to move the process
+in a direction that we would like to see it go and it meets the
+needs and wishes of the Egyptian people. And I think we have to
+be prepared to deal with events as they emerge, but we don't
+want to try to anticipate bad outcomes in a way that would make
+it less likely to achieve.
+ Mr. Berman. I agree with that. I just in the end don't want
+the notion of the ensurance of that assistance become a basis
+for the slow walking of the orderly transition.
+ One last question. With all of the focus on Egypt, I just
+want--I would like you to take one moment to sort of discuss
+how the situation may be affecting situations outside of Egypt,
+such as Iran. And my specific question is whether the State
+Department is on track to make determinations on their
+investigations for those violating CISADA, our Iran sanctions
+legislation, next month.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, as you know, this is an issue
+that I spent a lot of time on. And the Secretary has asked me
+to put a lot of specific attention to make sure that we have a
+very vigorous implementation of CISADA. We think it has been an
+enormously helpful tool, and it has had enormous impact in
+helping us to galvanize the international community to take
+steps to put additional pressure on Iran, and I think we have
+had enormous success. This continues in a comprehensive way to
+affect Iran, the Iranian economy, and also keep in the sense of
+isolation.
+ So we understand the importance of making sure we have full
+enforcement on that. We have an ongoing effort that is looking
+at activities as they emerge, and I continue to pledge to you
+that we will do everything that we need to do both to enforce
+it, but also to use the statute in a broader way to engage with
+other countries to make clear that we need to remain vigilant
+not only about the letter of the law, but also the broader
+desire to make sure that we don't have companies trying to
+skirt those provisions.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
+ Now for the next round of questions. Mr. Smith, the
+chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and
+Human Rights.
+ Mr. Smith. Madam Chair, thank you very much.
+ Mr. Steinberg, welcome to the committee.
+ You know, he is the administration dictator until his
+utility and usefulness erodes or evaporates or diminishes, and
+then the administration finds its public voice on human rights
+and democracy and calls on the former friend to get out of
+town.
+ You mentioned, Mr. Steinberg, a moment ago about the
+consistency of principles, and I frankly have some concerns
+about that.
+ A few weeks ago, President Obama rolled out the red carpet
+as President Hu Jintao came into Washington, a brutal dictator
+who has murdered, tortured, and repressed countless Chinese,
+Tibetans, and Uighurs. The press conference with Hu Jintao was
+so disturbing--I watched it, and I couldn't believe my ears--
+and even the Washington Post wrote an editorial on January 19.
+It said, ``President Obama makes Hu Jintao look good on
+rights.''
+ The President defended his friend, his dictator friend, and
+said the Chinese had a ``different culture,'' which I found to
+be an absolute insult to the Chinese people, especially those
+who are suffering in Lao Gai, who are being tortured for
+demanding their fundamental human rights.
+ He also said he had a different political system, as if
+that was a defense, and that is what the Washington Post picked
+up on. Yeah. It is a different system. It is a dictatorship.
+ My question is--you know, so I think we need to be very
+cautious, and I would respectfully submit to you be cautious
+when you talk about consistency and principles. Even Liu Xiaobo
+is languishing in prison, as we all know, right now. And then
+something was said behind the scenes. But we need public
+statements, not when it is--when that dictatorship is in its
+final hour, but consistently, and in a very transparent
+fashion, to let them know that we know.
+ I read all of the Chinese press after the fact on the
+People's Daily, at least what was carried there. They called Hu
+Jintao's trip to Washington a tour de force, that he just took
+over Washington, and we were sitting there enfeebled by the
+effort that we showed. So I am very concerned when you talk
+about consistency.
+ I do have a question about freedom of press and reporters
+in particular. Reporters Without Borders suggests that as many
+as 79 journalists have been attacked in Egypt, 76 detained, 1
+has been killed. Do we know how high up in the command, whether
+or not the Army, whether or not the military, whether or not
+Mubarak, ordered that, or did it come from the Muslim
+Brotherhood, or was it just an outgrowth of the chaos of the
+day each day?
+ And secondly, I would like to ask about a very disturbing
+report that an American company, Narus, has sold the Egyptian
+Government what is called deep packet inspection technology,
+highly advanced technology that allows the purchaser to search
+the content of e-mails as they pass through the Internet
+routers. The report is from an NGO called Free Press, and it is
+based on information Narus itself has revealed about its
+business.
+ Now, there is no way of knowing whether the information the
+Egyptian Government gleaned from its Narus technology enabled
+it to identify, track down, and harass or detain some of the
+journalists or anybody else in Egypt.
+ I would like to know what we know about this company. And
+it is part of Boeing. It was recently bought. And what can you
+tell us about Narus and this invasion of privacy on the
+Internet?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Congressman.
+ Obviously we had an extended conversation about China,
+which I would welcome the chance to discuss with you. But I
+just would make one point that in addition to the very public
+remarks that President Obama made, my boss, Secretary Clinton,
+made an extensive speech the week before President Hu came here
+in which she specifically identified our concerns about Liu
+Xiaobo and other specific dissidents and, I think, gave a very
+clear and very unequivocal statement about the importance that
+we attach to human rights in China.
+ So I certainly appreciate the importance of consistency,
+and I think it is something that we have made a part of our
+engagement with China.
+ With respect to the journalists, we have made clear we have
+many priorities that we are focusing on as this transition goes
+forward. But we have been explicitly very clear about the
+unacceptability about the way the journalists have been
+treated, the harassment, the imprisonment and the like.
+ I think it is difficult to know--to answer fully your
+question about who is behind it. What is encouraging, though,
+is that because of the intervention of us and others, the
+journalists have been released, and it is important that we
+keep a focus on that because it has been the critical voice
+that has kept public eyes and ears on that.
+ On your second question, obviously I am unfamiliar with the
+company that you identified, but I will be happy to see what we
+know about that.
+ Mr. Smith. Could you dig into that and get back to the
+committee, because it is very important. It goes to the whole
+issue of increasingly that U.S. corporations are enabling
+dictatorships. We saw it in Iran with a German corporation. We
+have seen it in China. We have seen it in Belarus where the
+Internet was used and is used to track down dissidents, to
+invade their e-mails, find out who they are talking to. It is
+an awful tool of repression, and Narus, according to these
+reports, has been enabling that kind of invasion of privacy.
+ So thank you very much.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you. We would appreciate
+answers to that.
+ Mr. Ackerman, the ranking member of the Middle East
+Subcommittee.
+ Mr. Ackerman. Thank you very much.
+ Good to see you, Mr. Secretary.
+ Consistency is important, especially in foreign policy. A
+foolish consistency is something much to be avoided.
+ There is a question that keeps asking itself, and some of
+us are asking it, and it demands a real answer. We can agree on
+the principle of freedom of speech and freedom of
+communication, and we can agree how important it is to
+democratic and civil societies. But when you pose a question,
+that there is information out there that is in a virus, would
+you say that that would be welcome in your computer if the
+purpose of the virus was to bring down the system?
+ My question is about the Muslim Brotherhood. They are an
+element of society for sure, and we have principles that all
+elements of societies are welcome, and everybody has a right to
+freedom of religion, and et cetera.
+ Now, I believe in treating my neighbor as myself, but that
+doesn't tell me that I should invite Jeffrey Dahmer to my house
+for dinner. Nothing good will come of that.
+ How do you form a government and welcome in as an element
+of it a party that would destroy the government itself and
+expect stability? This is a tough question, and we really have
+to think about it. In being civil and democratic and welcoming,
+we also have to avoid being foolish.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Mr. Ackerman.
+ Obviously, this is an important question, and I will just
+make two observations. Which is, one, some of you know I am a
+lapsed lawyer, but I do remember from my constitutional law
+that even for free speech, there are limits to free speech. And
+we know we can't cry ``fire'' in a crowded theater and the
+like. Even in our own system, we recognize that speech has to
+support civil society and be part of that.
+ Mr. Ackerman. Are you saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is
+an exception?
+ Mr. Steinberg. No. What I am saying is that if there were
+actual acts that were threatening to people, that that would
+not be acceptable. I want to make clear that we don't think
+that threatening acts of violence would be an acceptable form
+of speech. And I think that is why we made an important
+statement about the need for lack of violence.
+ But even more important, I think what we are focused on and
+you have raised the question is not so much the dialogue that
+is going on now, but what kind of government emerges once this
+transition takes place. And I think we have had a consistent
+record in saying that there are circumstances in which parties
+fail to respect democracy, fail to be an acceptable participant
+in government, that we could not be supportive of that
+happening. Obviously a very clear case of that is the Hamas and
+the Palestinian Authority. We made our position very clear on
+that.
+ I don't want to try to anticipate what is going to be the
+outcome of this process of democratization in Egypt, but I do
+think we will bring those same sets of principles together,
+which is that a government that will have our support is one
+that respects open society.
+ Mr. Ackerman. My concern is that we be as wise as we could
+be considering the alternatives.
+ Lebanon. What happens if the new Government of Lebanon
+rejects whatever the results of the tribunal might indicate?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think two points about this, which is,
+one, we attach enormous importance to the continuation of the
+tribunal, and we will do what we can to sustain that effort
+irrespective of what the decisions are of the Lebanese
+Government. It is our clear expectation that whatever
+government is formed, it meet its international obligations
+with respect to the tribunal, and that is what we will expect
+to hold them to. I think we----
+ Mr. Ackerman. If Lebanon pulls its financial support for
+the tribunals, some think it would collapse. Are we considering
+withholding aid from Lebanon?
+ Mr. Steinberg. As I mentioned earlier in response to Mr.
+Berman's question, I think we obviously keep questions of
+assistance under review. Right now we are focusing on trying to
+encourage all of the parties, including the Prime Minister
+designate, to make sure we have an inclusive government that
+meets its obligations. So long as that continues, and at least
+up until now the tribunal has not been undermined, we are
+continuing our assistance. But obviously we will have to keep
+that under review and look at the circumstances as they emerge.
+ Mr. Ackerman. I thank the chair for the extension of time.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Ackerman.
+Great questions.
+ So pleased to yield 5 minutes to the chair of the
+Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia, Mr. Chabot, for 5
+minutes.
+ Mr. Chabot. Thank you, Madam Chair.
+ Secretary, I have a number of questions. Some of them have
+already been talked about to some degree. But clearly we all
+want democracy. We want the people of Egypt to improve their
+conditions and their freedoms. Our overriding concern is that
+what we all want is going to end up with the folks that we--and
+I don't think the Egyptians themselves, the vast majority, want
+to be in control--and that is the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamic
+Jihadists or whatever terminology one wants to use.
+ They said a lot of things, and they are, I think, trying to
+portray themselves to some degree as being, well, we are more
+moderate now. And could you talk a little bit about Sharia law
+and what they said and what you really think their position is
+on that with respect to Egypt if they would gain control?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think there is a lot of speculation as to
+what their goals or objectives are, and I think I would prefer
+to leave that to the analysts.
+ What I would say from the perspective of the policymakers'
+point of view is that we have to be clear about what anybody
+joining the government would be expected to be committed to,
+and that commitment is to an open, tolerant society that allows
+for religious diversity, for differences of opinion; that
+doesn't undermine civil society; that supports an open
+discourse among all elements of society; and, rather than
+trying to anticipate what any particular member organization
+is, that we hold to those principles, and we certainly make
+clear to anybody who is joining a future government must commit
+themselves to those principles, and if they do not, then we
+would be clear about what our position is.
+ Mr. Chabot. Do you know what they are saying about Sharia
+law at this point in time?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I am familiar with their writings, and I
+think what we know is that there are different instances in
+which Sharia law has been used in different societies. Some
+have been tolerant; some have been very intolerant. And what we
+need to focus on is what will protect basic civil liberties,
+and will this next government, and if this organization cannot
+support and subscribe to those things, we believe that it would
+be inconsistent with the very efforts that are going on right
+now.
+ Mr. Chabot. You said some of them tolerant and some of them
+intolerant. Can you give me an example of tolerant Sharia law?
+ Mr. Steinberg. What I am saying, Mr. Chairman, is that
+there are examples of where in domestic law like Sharia law has
+been a part of societies. But what we are focusing on is what
+political law is and what are the political circumstances under
+which a government should govern. And that government has to
+meet these basic principles that we are identifying.
+ So I think that is what we want to focus on: What are the
+political rights? What are the opportunities for the society?
+What are the opportunities for citizens to exercise their
+rights? What are the opportunities for religious minorities?
+ One of the strengths of Egyptian society is the fact that
+Christians play such an important role, and that there is a
+small Jewish community there and other religious minorities. So
+if Sharia law means no tolerance for that, then that would not
+be something that we support.
+ Mr. Chabot. Let me ask you this on a different topic.
+Relative to the Turkish model, there are obviously some
+parallels and some differences between Turkey and Egypt,
+obviously, but in Turkey the military plays a particularly
+important stabilizing historic role there. What are the
+comparisons with that in Egypt, and are there differences?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think what has been encouraging, and I
+think it has been a positive aspect of our engagement, is that
+thus far as events have unfolded in Egypt, that the military
+has respected the right for peaceful assembly, and it has not
+tried to suppress the legitimate rights of people to express
+their views, to assemble and the like. And we would hope that
+in any society, any government that emerges in Egypt, that we
+would have the same commitment from the role of the military,
+which is to support legitimate constitutional human rights. And
+that is something that we would look to in any society to see
+that as the role of the military.
+ Mr. Chabot. I have only got a short period of time. Let me
+comment on something that is kind of frustrating to the
+policymakers here in Washington, I am sure to the American
+people to some degree, and that is with the considerable
+resources that we have invested in those two countries, Egypt
+and Turkey, when you do public opinion polls of the people of
+those countries, the United States isn't particularly well
+thought of or popular. I don't know if you want to comment on
+that. I have been told that is because we are so close, that
+they expect more, et cetera, et cetera. Do you have any comment
+on that?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think it is a challenge to us, and I think
+it is an important challenge to us, because I think that it is
+critical as we go forward that we find ways to understand why
+that is and, to the extent that we can be consistent with our
+own principles and values, that we try to do that.
+ Now, obviously there may be circumstances in which we are
+unpopular for things that we believe in, and we will stand up
+for them. But I think if we can do a better job of
+communicating and indicating that we do share the aspirations
+of people all around the world for a better life and better
+opportunity, that that is important, and it has been a major
+purpose of what Secretary Clinton has tried to do with the
+State Department.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much.
+ And I would like to recognize Mr. Gregory Meeks of New York
+for the next round of 5 minutes.
+ Thank you, Gregory.
+ Mr. Meeks. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
+ Good to see you, Mr. Secretary.
+ Let me ask this question. One of the things that I do get
+concerned about, and I know a lot of my colleagues, et cetera,
+and I talk about the Muslim Brotherhood, et cetera. However,
+if, in fact, we seem too heavy-handed, sometimes it is like the
+kid, the child; you tell them don't date this person, don't
+date that person, and they date the person just to spite you at
+times. I want to make sure that we don't get into that
+scenario. And I have tremendous faith in the Egyptian people
+from what I have seen thus far. They want freedom. They want to
+make sure that they have democracy, which they have been denied
+for 30 years.
+ That being said, what you don't want to happen is there to
+be a vacuum so that someone like the Brotherhood steps up. And
+what concerns me is with the opposition, and I don't know what
+leaders can evolve or will evolve because it seems as though
+they are leaderless. And when you begin these negotiations and
+conversations, you know, there has to be someone that is
+talking.
+ So I was just wondering, and I had asked this question
+yesterday, who are the leaders that we can expect to emerge,
+and is there anything that you can tell us about them, and can
+the protesters achieve their goals basically without a leader?
+ And so and I want to tie that in as quickly as I could to
+the fact that there was a lack of a clear leadership in the
+Tunisia revolution also. And how that is going because I am
+concerned about this--going to Tunisia real quickly about the
+assessments of a security situation there. There was some more
+violence this weekend, a protest, and in your view, what course
+of action toward holding the formal regimes internal security
+services accountable for past abuses would be conducive to a
+greater political openness without contributing to greater
+destabilization.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Congressman. I think there are--
+and we shouldn't underestimate a lot of important and we well-
+respected civil society voices in Egypt from the NGOs, from
+legal professionals and the like who may well form a part of
+the future Egyptian Government. I think it is both difficult to
+prevent and not on a roll to sort of anoint individuals to be
+the ones. But I do think that that is why we so much have
+focused on urging Egyptian Government to create a process to
+allow these voices to come together, the wise men's group that
+is meeting and others, which do include a variety of well
+respected voices in the society, but also to make sure that the
+younger people who are on the streets also have a chance to
+express their views and to have those perspectives heard.
+ I think the nature of democratic process is not to try to
+preselect the leaders, but to establish some institutions and
+processes that then will allow for good, free and fair
+competition elections where individuals will stand for
+election, and the Egyptian people will pick. And I think we
+have a real belief that that process can take place. And that
+what needs to happen now is to take the institutional decisions
+to repeal the emergency law, to take the steps to allow for
+parties to register, for there to be a full debate, and to have
+an election, and to have those very important voices that are
+being heard throughout Egyptian society now, have a chance to
+put their views forward in their candidacy.
+ On Tunisia, I would just say that we do think
+accountability is very important. Different societies have
+different ways of doing it, and different conflict situations,
+that has been done. But I think it is something that the
+interim government is focusing on is to establish an approach
+to accountability and understanding both of what happened
+during the past regime and during the transition, and we would
+certainly support that.
+ Mr. Meeks. Are we dealing with, Tunisia again, is the
+administration reviewing Tunisia's aid package which is
+currently focused on military assistance. And is it more
+assistance needed by Tunisia for democratic institutional
+building as Tunisia's new government requested technical
+assistance from the United States for the purpose of supporting
+the reform agenda? And will the continuation of military
+assistance programs be contingent upon human rights benchmarks
+or other benchmarks?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Well, clearly on the last, we are under a
+mandate from you to make sure that it does. And so that would
+be an important part of what we do. More broadly, we have been
+engaged in conversations with the interim government in terms
+of how we can support and help that transition. And I think
+that is, as I say, part of the flexibility and adaptability
+that we are trying to show now is to look for opportunities to
+support that process going forward.
+ Mr. Meeks. And finally, let me just ask, what level of
+electoral success would you anticipate from the Tunisian
+Islamic groups, if they are allowed to compete in the national
+elections that they had promised within the next 6 months?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Again, Congressman, we have basic a
+principle that guides us, which is that we will support and
+encourage governments that meet the basic tests of tolerance,
+inclusiveness and openness. And rather than trying to prejudge
+what these groups will do, we will judge them by their deeds.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. And before
+yielding 5 minutes to my Florida colleague, Mr. Rivera, I would
+like, without objection, the ranking member to be recognized
+for an announcement.
+ Mr. Berman. We have just learned that, and I think on
+behalf of the chair and the entire committee wants to extend
+our condolences and the condolences of the entire committee to
+the loved ones and friends of Khairy Ramadan Aly. This is a
+fellow who was a U.S. Embassy Cairo staff employee for 18
+years. He went missing from his home on January 28th and just
+today has been confirmed as dead. And so on behalf of all of
+us----
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Mr. Berman. It is obviously a
+tribute to the dedicated, locally employed staff and the risks
+that they take, and I appreciate that. And on behalf of all of
+us, we appreciate that.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. Mr.
+Rivera.
+ Mr. Rivera. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Secretary, thank
+you so much for being here. I am heartened by your testimony
+regarding the impact of the crisis in Egypt, vis-a-vis Israel.
+I am glad you agree that irrespective of whatever emerges out
+of the uncertain circumstances in Egypt that U.S. interests
+remain constant. And specifically that Egypt continue to honor
+its commitment to peace with Israel.
+ So I am wondering if you can elaborate, and please be as
+specific as possible, as to what exact message the United
+States is delivering, has been delivering, will be delivering
+to all the parties regarding Egypt's commitment to peace with
+Israel?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I thank you, Congressman. The message has
+been very clear, which is the peace treaty between Israel and
+Egypt is not just in the interest of Israel, it is in the
+interest of Egypt and the region as a whole. And therefore, we
+would expect any government to honor its international
+commitments, and to honor a treaty that was signed by that
+government, and to remain committed to it not just in letter
+but in spirit.
+ This is a foundation for Egypt's future success. The
+prospect of the conflict with Israel would serve no interest of
+Egypt's, and it would certainly not be consistent with our
+interests. So I think we are very unequivocal about both our
+own position but also making fair that this is not a favor to
+anybody else. That if Egypt should continue it and the reason
+we would expect Egypt to continue it is because it is in
+Egypt's interest.
+ Mr. Rivera. Over the years, Mr. Secretary, the United
+States has sold a great deal of military equipment to Egypt,
+and at the same time, we have been deeply committed to Israel's
+qualitative military edge, and essentially, Israel's ability to
+defend it. And part of that calculus in providing weapons to
+Egypt was that it was committed to peace with Israel. If
+Egypt's commitment toward peace with Israel changes, how will
+that effect future decisions about the sale and maintenance of
+weapon systems to the Egyptians?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, any time there would be a
+dramatic change in circumstances, we would have to take that
+into account in making our decisions, but I think our focus now
+on the positive message, which is the benefits of engagement
+that we have had with Egypt and the Egyptian military, and
+therefore would expect them to see the benefits of continuing
+this and continuing that basic process, which has led to this
+long period of peace between Israel and Egypt.
+ Mr. Rivera. Based on your experience and developments that
+you are seeing occurring right now, do you see Egypt continuing
+to play a positive role on issues in general regional
+stability, for example, opposition to Iran's nuclear program,
+standing up to Islamic radicalism, et cetera?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I would have every reason to expect that a
+more democratic Egypt would be at least as much committed to
+those principles, because in a democratic society, all the
+things that you have talked about are inimical to a democratic
+society. And some of the kind of intolerance, the support for
+terrorism and the things that we would be concerned about are
+something that a strong and vibrant democratic government in
+Egypt would also share. I think that has been our experience.
+ If you look around the world, who are our strong partners
+on all of these global challenges? Not just the shared values,
+but the shared interest. When we are dealing with Iran, who are
+our strong partners? Our strong partners in Europe, the
+democratic societies there. We are working with Japan, we are
+working with Korea. So I think we believe very strongly that in
+terms of the interests, whether it is sustaining peace in the
+Middle East, dealing with terrorism, dealing with Iran's
+nuclear program. That an open vibrant Egyptian Government would
+be very much in sync with those views and those perspectives.
+ Mr. Rivera. And up to this moment here today, you see no
+indications whether that be from any elements of Egyptian
+society, the military or otherwise, civil society, other
+elements of the government that any of these prospects could
+change in the negative fashion?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, we have to be vigilant.
+Obviously, we have seen events sometimes not fully predictable.
+But I think what we need to do is encourage and support those
+forces to reduce the chances of those things happening. And our
+whole strategy is to try to do that by engaging in supporting
+this process to reduce the risks that these dangers which you
+rightfully identify, and which we do have to be alert to, don't
+emerge.
+ Mr. Rivera. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I yield back the
+remainder of my time.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. And now I would
+like to yield to another Florida colleague, Congressman Deutch
+for 5 minutes of questioning.
+ Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to pick up
+where my colleague from Florida left off and broaden from
+there. Starting with the issue of aid, not just to Egypt but
+aid to Israel as well. It gives us a good jumping off point for
+a broader debate that is taking place right now on Capitol
+Hill, and that has to do with foreign aid more generally.
+ There are proposals that have been floating around that
+have suggested that State Department and foreign aid requests
+should be lumped in with non security spending and as such,
+should be subject to cuts, reductions anywhere between 10 and
+30 percent. Given the State Department's role in Pakistan, and
+in Afghanistan, and in the war on terror, given the national
+security concerns that we have, and further, given the role
+that foreign aid plays not just in the Middle East, not just in
+helping Israel to ensure that Israel has a qualitative military
+edge, but in the role that foreign aid plays in global health
+and maternal care, children's health, the role that foreign aid
+plays fighting global hunger. The role of foreign aid in
+fighting narcotraffickers in Latin America and in continuing
+President Bush's signature achievement in combating AIDS in
+Africa.
+ Reconstruction, counterterrorism. And finally, given some
+of the suggestions that have been made on the Hill to eliminate
+foreign aid altogether, and suggestions from some outside, some
+prominent outside groups that all foreign aid should be on the
+table, is it appropriate, do you believe, Mr. Secretary, for us
+to look to what is 1 percent or less of the Federal budget in
+finding ways to balance the budget by eliminating foreign
+assistance altogether? And wouldn't the elimination of foreign
+aid put our Nation at greater risk?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Well, thank you, Congressman. As you can
+well imagine the Secretary and all of us feel very strongly,
+and the President that this is a critical part of assuring our
+national interest. Our ability to engage in the world, to
+support democratic institutions, to build economic opportunity,
+to deal with the problems of health and hunger are all critical
+questions we asked earlier about how the world looks at
+America. This is part of the positive engagement of American
+that allows us to build friends and to have support on our
+interests and they touch our national interests ourselves. If
+we don't deal with the problem of global public health, those
+things could come home to us.
+ It is having a strong, balanced strategy of smart power of
+engagement in the world, that has a strong defense, but also
+supports development and diplomacy that allows the United
+States to pursue its interests over the long term, and to have
+the kind of partners that we need to move forward.
+ We have had important successes in Iraq, we need to sustain
+that. It would be a tragedy right now with all that has been
+achieved and the sacrifice that has taken place not to be able
+to continue the progress they are creating, a good example of a
+democratic tolerant society in Iraq, which is a very powerful
+signal throughout this region, including to Egypt, to continue
+to make sure that the extremists don't come back in
+Afghanistan.
+ We know what had happened before and we have a critical
+issue that, again, echoes so much of what you all have been
+discussing this morning about how do we assure that extremism
+doesn't come back? It is by supporting tolerant, more open
+political societies and good governance and the rule of law.
+These are the things we do with our assistance programs, with
+our engagement with civil society. They are critically
+important to our national interests and this is, as we think
+about our long-term future and the role of the United States in
+the world, this is an absolutely indispensable part.
+ And so, we do hope that as we understand the fiscal
+challenges, but this is a very small part of the budget, but it
+is a critically important one for fundamental national security
+interests of United States.
+ Mr. Deutch. And just again, Mr. Secretary, am I correct
+that the foreign assistance budget is about 1 percent of the
+overall budget?
+ Mr. Steinberg. That is about right.
+ Mr. Deutch. And if you could speak to what a cut of 10 to
+30 percent across the board might mean? How would that impact
+American foreign policy?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think it would affect us across the board.
+It would mean that we would not be able to sustain our
+engagement on the civilian side in Iraq because it's so
+important that we make sure that this transition moves forward,
+that the reconciliation that is taking place through these two
+elections continues.
+ It would affect our ability to support civil society and
+democracy. It would affect our ability to deal with the
+problems of hunger and creating sustainable agriculture. It
+would affect our ability to deal with the problem of global
+public health. It would affect our ability to support the kind
+of work that we need to do around the world to build strong
+institutions.
+ And we are, right now, having good opportunities where we
+are engaged. But the opportunities are even greater if we see
+and smartly apply those resources.
+ We have an obligation to you to make sure that they are
+well-targeted, that they are well-conceived, and that they are
+well-managed. But in return, we think we deliver a benefit, and
+I think no one more articulate than Secretary Gates has made
+clear about how important that is to our national security.
+ Mr. Deutch. And finally, Mr. Secretary, to those who
+suggest that we ought to eliminate foreign aid all together, I
+suggest to them that they would be putting our Nation at risk.
+Would you agree with that?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think, as I say, it is a critical part of
+our smart power engagement of the world. The three legs of that
+stool that all the present survivors recognized are critical to
+our national security. And over our history, we go back to the
+Marshall Plan and so many other examples of how we sustained
+our long-term influence and protected our interest by the wise
+use of our resources in this area.
+ Our military cannot protect our national interest alone. We
+have seen that in Iraq, and we see it in Afghanistan. It has to
+be a balanced effort. And our contribution, the part that goes
+to the State Department and assistance is very small compared
+to Defense. But has a huge multiplier effect, it has a huge
+positive impact on the well-being of the American people.
+ Also on the economic side it helps open up economic
+opportunities. It creates opportunities for American jobs and
+American exports. That is what our diplomats do every day,
+advocating for American interests, opening markets and the
+like. So there are many ways in which U.S. interests are being
+protected by this rather modest investment.
+ Mr. Deutch. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And I yield back,
+Madam Chair.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Deutch.
+ Mr. Rohrabacher, the chairman of the Subcommittee on
+Oversight and Investigations.
+ Mr. Rohrabacher. Now following up on my last colleague's
+line of questioning, putting America in jeopardy, let me just
+note putting us at a risk at a much greater level than what we
+are talking about is $1.5 trillion worth of deficit spending a
+year that we have to borrow from China. And we cannot maintain
+that. And if we continue to do that, our economy will collapse
+under a burden of debt that we have never experienced before.
+ So this is not, Oh boy, we would love to do this, we would
+love to do that. No, there are certain things that we are going
+have to come to grips with and be serious about. And I will
+tell you, borrowing more money from China in order to give it
+to other people in different countries is not something that I
+consider to be a positive option. It is crazy, it is insane.
+ We have been providing aid to Egypt over all of these
+years. And now we have people who seem to be high and mighty
+about how bad Mr. Mubarak is, but have supported this aid
+program to Egypt all of these years.
+ It seems to me that American foreign policy is not based on
+principle, as you have suggested today, it should be or has
+been, but instead it is based on juggling. What can we do for
+the moment not to create a crisis, rather than have a long-term
+principled policy and a policy aimed not at what we can do for
+the world but what is best for the people of the United States
+of America? And let me get to----
+ Mr. Ackerman. Would the gentleman yield?
+ Mr. Rohrabacher. No, I won't. I have got a line of
+questioning I would like to ask. I have got a very fine
+diplomat. Let me just note, we have so much juggling going on,
+that we can't have someone like yourself answer a straight
+question about the nature of Sharia law. Now, if we can't do
+that, how do we expect to have the American people and the
+people of the world understand where we draw the line?
+ Yeah. We can have people jump up and applaud that Mr.
+Mubarak is gone, yeah. But what is going to happen 2 years down
+the road when we have an administration in Egypt that puts
+women in jail, much less permitting them to participate in the
+system, if they try to go on the street without wearing a veil?
+Is that what we are going to end up with Mubarak gone? We are
+trying not to end up with that.
+ Let me just note that I have been dismayed that for all of
+these years, we have taken an administration in Egypt, which is
+less than democratic, less than honest, we have known that, but
+we have treated them well, and then as soon as--but they have
+been basically a pro-stability and a pro-Western government.
+And as soon as they are vulnerable, we turn on them with a
+vengeance, as compared to an anti democratic regime in Iran
+when there are demonstrators in the streets against them, we
+have sort of a muffled response. Well, we can't really go in
+and side with the demonstrators against this anti-American
+Mullah regime dictatorship in Iran.
+ We can't do that because that would be just too intrusive.
+But in Egypt where you have a friendly regime--as I say, we
+don't just toss Mubarak, a guy who has tried to be a force for
+stability, we don't just toss him under the boss, we toss him
+to the wolves, and then we are surprised when the wolves end up
+eating our lunch.
+ Let's get to some basics here. The administration Mubarak--
+President Mubarak offered to say that he would not be a
+candidate, and his son would not be a candidate and he would
+oversee a basically a caretaker regime until the September
+elections were held, and the people of Egypt were permitted to
+make their decision as to what direction their country should
+go. What was wrong with that?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, let me just briefly comment on
+your first point first, and then I'll----
+ Mr. Rohrabacher. Sure.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. You have 30 seconds.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I understand.
+ Mr. Rohrabacher. Pardon me.
+ Mr. Steinberg. But having had it raised, I think our
+position on Sharia law is very clear. And it was illustrated
+very dramatically in the case of a proposal for the institution
+of Sharia law in Afghanistan, which would have deprived women
+of their rights and which would have been unacceptable to the
+United States. And we made clear to President Karzai in the
+Afghan Parliament that that was unacceptable to us.
+ So I don't think there was any lack of clarity or lack of
+understanding on our part about where the red lines are and our
+principals are. So I understand your question, but I want to
+make clear from our perspective that we do understand that
+point. And we do understand----
+ Mr. Rohrabacher. It did seem that you were dodging the
+question earlier.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I apologize if I appeared to be dodging, but
+I hope----
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. That was a good
+exchange. Thank you for those excellent questions.
+ Mr. Keating is recognized for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Keating. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for
+being here, Secretary Steinberg. During the Iranian protest 2
+years ago, Americans saw how the Iranian people used the social
+media, it is no longer in dispute, the effect of the Internet
+on the Egyptian uprising. And they use Twitter, Facebook,
+texting, YouTube, to gain a following in the country. And
+exacting admiration in much of the world process.
+ However, many American people were shocked to know years
+ago that the Iranians were using the social media, you know, to
+monitor protests and to down opposition leaders and even worse,
+we discovered that companies, as was mentioned by Congressman
+Smith, with the presence in the United States were helping the
+Iranian regime exploit technology and turn innovation into
+violence.
+ So when the Egyptian Government commenced its cyber
+crackdown, frankly no one was surprised. I don't think they
+followed that. But it seems that American company is involved
+in this instance as well. A company in California sold the
+Egyptian state-run Internet provider the technology to monitor
+the Internet, allowing the Egyptian Government to crack down in
+dissent. And I also understand that the Pakistani Government, a
+telecom company and the Saudi Government's telecom company have
+this technology. It is no secret, I think, to anyone, that
+neither has a glowing record on human rights.
+ I would like to know what the Department is doing to work
+with American companies that are selling their technology and
+these products around the world to ensure that these products
+are not an obstacle to human rights at best or a tool of
+violence at worst. When we sell weapons to other countries, we
+require an end-use monitoring agreement. Do you think that such
+an agreement to make sure that U.S. technology is not abused is
+in order at all? Is that being considered, thank you.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, as I mentioned to Congressman
+Smith, I am not familiar with the specific case, but we will
+get back to you on that. I think, more generally, one of the
+things that we have tried to do as we work with civil society
+is both to promote openness and to support their access to
+alternative media when it has been deprived. But frankly, also,
+to help them understand the dangers and the risk to them too.
+And I think it is two sides to the coin, and that we have to be
+alert to the dangers that will be used by people for the wrong
+reasons.
+ So part of our educational effort in our work with them is
+to help groups in civil society protect themselves and to take
+measures to be sensitive to these things.
+ In terms of the specific technologies, again, without
+knowing the specifics, it is hard to make a general
+observation, but I think it is something we should take under
+advisement.
+ Mr. Keating. I would ask if there is any discussion along
+those lines, I would like to know myself, and I am sure that
+many members of the committee would like to know that because,
+indeed, people are losing their lives based on this technology.
+And it is not a stretch to say it is being used as a weapons by
+some of these other countries, and as such, should be treated
+that way in end-use monitoring agreements so it would be
+curious to know anything on that. Thank you.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, do get back to us on
+that.
+ Mr. Keating. I yield the rest of my time.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Without objection, I would just like
+to yield myself 30 seconds of time to welcome back and
+congratulate and say thank you to a member of our Foreign
+Affairs family, a member of our majority staff, Matt Zweig, who
+has just returned from a year of military service in Kandahar,
+Afghanistan. So thank you, Matt. Good to have you back.
+ And with that, I would like to yield 5 minutes of
+questioning to our subcommittee chairman on Europe and Eurasia,
+Mr. Burton.
+ Mr. Burton. I thank the gentlelady for yielding, and I
+appreciate you being here, Mr. Steinberg. My big concern is the
+United States first, and our very close ally, Israel in the
+Middle East, and toward that end, it appears to me there is
+still a great deal of uncertainty right now. We are getting all
+kinds of reports on what is going on and nobody knows for sure
+what is happening. But we do know there has been upheaval, not
+only in Egypt, but in other countries over there. And we get
+about 30 percent of our energy from that part of the world.
+ And although the decision on exploring for energy here in
+the United States will not rest with the State Department, the
+State Department does have a role to play in deciding where our
+national security interests lie.
+ And right now if we have problems over there in the Suez
+Canal, and Egypt is the Suez Canal, or if things get bad over
+in the Persian Gulf states, or if, and we see some people
+concerned about things in Iraq. If things go awry in Iraq
+because of Iran, we can see our supply of energy diminished
+dramatically. And I think the State Department's obligation is
+that they need to start expressing that to the administration.
+The administration has--and we get about 30 percent of our
+energy from the Persian Gulf region. We get about 20 percent
+from Venezuela who is in league with Tehran right now.
+ So there is half of our energy. And we can't get permits to
+drill in the Gulf now. We can't drill off the Continental
+Shelf, we can drill in the ANWR. We can't drill for natural
+gas. We had T. Boone Pickens here the last couple of days
+talking about that.
+ And we have the ability to be energy independent within a
+decade. There is no question about it. We have more energy in
+this country collectively, including gas and oil, coal shale
+that can be converted into oil, that any place in the world,
+there is no question about it. But we are not moving in that
+direction, so we are still dependent on the Middle East and
+they have a life and death grip on us if everything goes awry.
+ And so I would like for you to answer the question, why is
+it there is not more attention being paid by this
+administration and the State Department to the security of this
+Nation, both economically and militarily, because we are not
+moving toward energy independence? Not only that, but if you
+talk to the average person who is paying $3.50 a gallon for
+gasoline knowing it is going to go to $5 or $6 if things get
+out of control in a little bit, they are saying, you know, if
+we have that ability, why don't we do something about it?
+ So where is the State Department on this issue? And why
+isn't the State Department and Secretary Clinton talking to the
+President about the long-term issue of what happens if things
+go in the wrong direction in that part of the world?
+ And make no mistake about it, if you look at history and
+there is a book from 1776 to now, which I hope you read and the
+people at the State Department, you will see upheaval in that
+part of the world is a constant, and our security depends on
+it. So while we are concerned about that area and democracy and
+everything else, why in the world isn't State and
+administration talking about moving toward energy independence.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Mr. Chairman, it is a complex issue for the
+whole administration.
+ Mr. Burton. It is not that complex.
+ Mr. Steinberg. In terms of the other parts of the
+administration that are engaged. And I am not the spokesman
+from that respect, but I can talk about some other things.
+ Mr. Burton. Before you go to other things. What I would
+really like for you to do is go back to the State Department
+and tell them to talk to the administration about our national
+security. We are supposed to work with other nations in the
+world, to bring about stability and we use foreign policy and
+foreign aid to do all that. But the number 1 responsibility of
+government, according to the Constitution of the United States,
+is to protect this country, economically and, militarily. And
+we are risking that right now, all you have to do is look at
+what is going on not only in Egypt, but in other countries in
+the Middle East.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think if you look at our energy strategy,
+one, the President has indicated the importance of developing
+domestic sources. Two, we have talked about, in addition to oil
+and gas, there are other energy sources like the efforts we are
+doing to revive nuclear energy. We also are working to
+diversify so that we are not dependent on these dangerous
+areas. For example, a new agreement that we are negotiating
+with Mexico to have access to activities on the boundary in the
+Gulf. I was just in Africa and looking at opportunities to have
+access with Ghana, a democracy in Africa which has----
+ Mr. Burton. I am talking about energy we have here in the
+United States.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Steinberg. Your time
+has run out. Mr. Burton, I think you have made your point clear
+and we would appreciate it if you would get back to Mr. Burton
+about energy independence and the administration's plan.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Certainly.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Cicilline of Rhode Island is
+recognized for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Cicilline. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I too want to
+welcome our guest and thank you for being here. And thank you
+Mr. Secretary for being here. The first question I have is a
+follow up on Mr. Berman's question, is it the administration's
+position that with respect to the constitutional provision in
+the Egyptian Constitution with respect to religious parties
+that it is possible to repeal that provision, but have a
+sufficiently--a government which is sufficiently tolerant to
+satisfy you or satisfy the Department that it will protect the
+interest of the Egyptian people and our international
+interests, or is it the administration's position that that
+prohibition ought to remain as part of the Egyptian
+Constitution? It sounded as if you weren't committed or the
+administration was not committed--at least to advocating for
+the preservation of that.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think we are committed to advocating for
+the principle. I think it would be a bit perilous for us to try
+to write the Constitution in the context they are doing it.
+There may be other formulations that are consistent with that
+principle, but I don't want to have any ambiguity about the
+importance of the principle.
+ Again, that is why, in our conversation earlier, I
+mentioned some cases where we have advocated very vigorously
+where that principle was inconsistent with basic values. And so
+that is what we will focus on going forward, is it consistent,
+that would be a way we would judge.
+ Mr. Cicilline. Also, would you tell me, it seems as if
+there is tremendous concern from everyone that has spoken
+really to us about the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in a
+future Egyptian Government. And I am just wondering what your
+impression is with respect to the likelihood of that happening.
+Interestingly, of course, when President Mubarak met, he had
+met first with them really in response to the protest which
+suggested to those of us from the outside that they may have a
+more significant role in a future government in Egypt than we
+might have first thought. So what do you think is a likely role
+they would play? And then second, do we have strategies or an
+approach which would help to ensure that funding doesn't go
+from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas moving forward?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Well, we are very focused and we are very
+vigilant because of the risk that this process become hijacked
+by extremists, by individualist groups that don't reflect or
+respect the very principles that we think people are
+demonstrating for. And we are obviously going to have to judge
+that by what emerges. There are an infinite number of
+possibilities that might come forward. But what we have to be
+clear on is that we expect the next Egyptian Government to have
+and advance the values of openness, tolerance, allowing people
+to pursue an open life with their human rights respected, with
+diversity respected, particularly on issues like religious
+freedom, on women's rights, on a right to have freedom of
+expression, of the press, of assembly. And we will apply those
+criteria with a real recognition from the history that we have
+seen in this region of the dangers that a process which might
+begin with good impulse might not end up that way.
+ So I think our challenge right now is rather than trying to
+say specifically now what will happen if it goes wrong, is to
+focus on what we can do to help it go right, and to support
+that process, and to be prepared to deal with it, and be clear
+that there would be consequences if the outcome is one that is
+not consistent with our values and our interest.
+ But right now, I think what it is critical is for us to
+talk about what we are for. And I think by articulating those
+principles and by identifying what we expect and what we
+believe is in the interest of the Egyptian people and what we
+think they are out there on the streets for. I think that
+creates a positive engagement for us, not one of--again being
+vigilant, but not based on the fear of the worst, but also an
+opportunity to achieve this good result.
+ Again, we must remain vigilant and have seen this go awry.
+And we will be prepared to both make clear what we are going to
+do and to deal with those circumstances.
+ Mr. Cicilline. Thank you. And I wanted to say finally,
+thank you for your very articulate testimony with respect to
+our responsibility to really approach our foreign policy in a
+very balanced way. It is clear to me that it is in the national
+security interest of our country to make the kind of
+investments that we are making around the world, both to avoid
+greater costs for our failure to become fully engaged. But also
+to retain our moral authority so that we can do the work on
+behalf of the American people, both in supporting our economy
+and supporting our security.
+ And so I think this question about foreign aid is an
+important one, but it is not simply done to help other nations,
+but it is really done principally to help the United States
+maintain its position internationally and to protect our
+economy and to protect our national security and I thank you
+particularly for those comments as well. I yield back the
+balance of my time.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much. And now we
+would like to hear from Chairman Ed Royce, the chair of the
+Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation,
+and Trade.
+ Mr. Royce. Mr. Steinberg, I met with a group of seven
+Egyptians from Cairo and Alexandria who had recently came to
+the United States, many of them young professionals, and I
+asked them to give me their opinions on what needs to be done.
+I would like to share with you sort of their list from the
+front lines.
+ The first observation they made is they shared with me that
+we need strict implementation of international human rights
+laws in this country and that there should be some discussion
+of this in the United States. A guarantee of basic freedoms by
+holding accountable those who violate international human
+rights laws.
+ The second thing they see missing from the discussion is an
+end to all discriminatory acts that are based on ethnicity and
+sex and religion throughout all sectors of society. And most
+important, some kind of discipline for those who violate that
+prohibition.
+ They asked for eradication of all ideologies in the
+education system because those installed discrimination and
+hatred among students starting at the preschool level and all
+the way up to the university level. This is partly because they
+say the Muslim Brotherhood has gotten control in the
+educational system and it is using it for that purpose.
+ The fourth thing, these are the young students that were in
+the streets--they want awareness of the imminent danger of
+radical religious groups in Egypt, such as the Muslim
+Brotherhood, which, to some extent, they say is funded by Iran.
+And one of the things they report is there is walking around
+money, and food, that has been provided by the Iranians, and it
+is annoying to those that are leading the charge to have on the
+streets a foreign influence, and they would like that known.
+ They say that this group has already infiltrated the
+backbone of some Egyptian society. They also ask for a
+reformation to the judicial system, a reformation to a system
+which currently supports a corrupt regime and does not provide
+justice to the citizens through the implementation of the laws.
+ They say bribery and corruption are the norm within most of
+the judicial branch and report--the young professionals told me
+they pay as much as 25 bribes in order get a little business
+going or in order to be professionals. We heard it from
+Hernando de Soto's report, right? The Finance Minister or
+former Finance Minister, I think it was of Egypt, supported
+Hernando's work. Hernando does his study, shows how you can
+unleash all of this potential growth in Egypt because you only
+know who owns 10 percent of the property. Nobody can start a
+business without doing payoffs.
+ So he lays out the reforms and the first thing the
+government does is sack their Minister who supported these
+reforms. That shows us how much has to be done here. So I would
+just add to your talking points when you talk about this, a
+government that respects its people, that is what we want from
+Egypt. A government that respects its people and isn't corrupt;
+let's add that to our talking points about what we want done. I
+just wanted your opinion about what the students and the young
+professionals had told me.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, I think that is an enormously
+constructive agenda. I think it is an important one that should
+be a shared agenda of all of us. I think the issues that you
+have raised are issues that should be of concern and that are
+important to the long-term success of Egypt. So if we haven't
+been clear enough that that is what we hope to see, we will do
+a better job. But it is one of the things. Especially, I want
+to agree especially with you on the point of rule of law and
+corruption, which is a big concern and it is really critical to
+the future. So thank you for those suggestions.
+ Mr. Royce. Well, there is one other point that they wanted
+to make. They said there are a lot of good voices such as the
+Council of the Wise, which was formed after January 25th
+revolution, as well as many other voices in Egyptian society
+that are well-known, that are admired by the people and are not
+part of the Muslim Brotherhood. And every one of them was
+absolutely in terror of what might happen if we end up
+negotiating and help putting the Muslim Brotherhood in
+positions of responsibility because, as they shared with me,
+that is an organization that only exists to take power, put in
+place an Islamic society and then carry out of the rest of the
+agenda, which, as one of them told me, the next thing you know
+we will be at war with Israel if they get control of the
+government. If you talk to young people in the Muslim
+Brotherhood, that is where they are driving the cadres on the
+street, that is the ideology.
+ So can you keep them out of the equation? I know we
+discussed this earlier, but can you do something to help those
+voices in Egypt that are so frightened of that consequence?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think that should be our objective and
+that is what we are trying to do.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you.
+ Mr. Steinberg. As I said, we have a program to address this
+and we can and will do more.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr.
+Chairman.
+ Mr. Royce. Thank you.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. My colleague from New York. It is
+good to see you, Elliot, recognized for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Engel. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to first of
+all welcome the Secretary. I was here for his remarks and I
+have known him for many years and we are lucky to have him. He
+does a great job. Thank you for the job you are doing.
+ As you know, for the past 4 years, I chaired the Western
+Hemisphere Subcommittee on this committee, and now I am the
+ranking member. And one of the things that has been irking me,
+and I am sure irking you and a lot of us, is that a lot of the
+South American governments are recognizing Palestine. And why
+it especially irks me is that the Palestinians are refusing to
+sit down with the Israelis and negotiate without all these
+ridiculous preconditions which actually shouldn't be
+preconditions at all. That is what you negotiate about.
+ And I look at it, it is rewarding the Palestinians for
+their intransigence. And I think that is the wrong thing to do,
+because rather than tell them they should go to the negotiating
+table, it sort of rewards them for not going to the negotiating
+table. Now we have this resolution before the Security Council
+which condemns Israel for the settlements, and makes it seem
+that the settlements are the reason why there is no peace,
+which I think is a bunch of nonsense. I think that if the
+Palestinians would negotiate with the Israelis that the
+settlement issue, along with other issues would be taken care
+of.
+ I would hope that if that happens, the administration would
+strongly and forcefully veto such a resolution as we have in
+the past. And I believe that the administration so far has not
+yet unequivocally indicated that it would do so. So I would
+like to ask you is that a fact, and if it is, I would strongly
+urge the administration to veto this resolution of the Security
+Council if it comes up.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I thank you, Congressman Engel. First just,
+if I comment on your first point about your recognitions we
+have made very clear to a lot of countries, including in the
+region that you talked about that you have had and continue to
+have responsibility for that we think this is
+counterproductive. I am disappointed frankly that we haven't
+had more success, but it has been in our engagement at the
+highest levels with each those governments. I, myself, have had
+several of those conversations. And so our position is well-
+known on that.
+ With respect to the Security Council, we have made very
+clear we do not think the Security Council is the right place
+to engage on these issues. I have had some success, at least
+for the moment, in not having that arise there. We will
+continue to employ the tools that we have to make sure that
+that continues to not happen. And we made clear both to the
+Palestinians and our key partners that there are other venues
+to discuss these issues, but the most important one of which is
+the one that you identified, which is the only way that this is
+going to be resolved is through engagement between the two
+parties, and that is our clear consistent position.
+ Mr. Engel. Thank you. Yesterday I asked the two questions
+to our panelists and I want to ask you the same two questions
+and so what your answer is vis-a-vis what they said to me. And
+I know some of this has been discussed in the past hour or so.
+But what are the differences you see between 1979 Iran
+revolution and 2011 Egypt? What are some of the differences
+that make us hopeful that perhaps the results that we saw in
+Iran wouldn't happen in Egypt?
+ And then, I know that another question I asked yesterday
+which I understand Mr. Ackerman touched upon is what do we do
+if Lebanon rejects the special tribunal? Mikati--the answer
+from the panelists yesterday from that question of mine is that
+Mikati should be shunned. He should not be invited to the
+United States, he should be told that this is unacceptable, and
+we should shun him.
+ As you know, I wrote the Syria Accountability Act, passed
+in 2004, and with our now chairman, she and I were on a crusade
+for many years to do this. And now Syria is still doing the
+same kind of nasty things it has always been doing in the
+region. We now have an ambassador there, but I don't see any
+positive things from their side. I would like to you comment on
+those three things if you could.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you. Both obviously complicated
+questions, especially the first. I got my start in government
+working on the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. And so I
+reflected a lot on that. I would simply say, first no two
+circumstances are identical. But also our engagement in Iran
+prior to the revolution was very different. The revolution of
+Iran was much more associated with our engagement with the
+prior regime.
+ Here I think we are seen as a positive force on the
+Egyptian side, so I think we can have a positive influence and
+I would be happy to go into more detail with you in less than 5
+seconds.
+ With respect to Lebanon, let me just say that we believe
+the continuation of the tribunal is essential, we made clear to
+Mikati in direct conversations that we had through the Embassy
+that that is our expectation. Again, I don't want to assume the
+worst now and say the precise consequences of it not going
+forward. But we have made clear that is what our expectation
+is, it is the international obligation of any government in
+Lebanon to meet those obligations. And we have made clear to
+Mr. Mikati that we expect him to do so as well.
+ Mr. Engel. Thank you.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much, Mr. Engel.
+ I am pleased to recognize Mr. Manzullo, the chairman of the
+Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Manzullo. Thank you, Madam Chair. In the summer of
+2009, many of us in this country were very dismayed over the
+fact that when the demonstrations broke out in Iran in the
+streets on day 1, our President said nothing. On day 2, our
+President said nothing. Finally, on day 3 he said something to
+the effect that we need a continued dialogue with the clerics.
+That was extraordinarily disappointing.
+ When the people started marching in Egypt, it didn't take
+the President that long to undermine President Mubarak and say
+he has got to go. I would like to know what the basis of the
+President's decision making was. At that time, you were Deputy
+Secretary of State and doing nothing in Iran 1\1/2\ years ago.
+Why didn't he do something?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, I obviously have a different
+view on what took place both in terms of the statements that we
+made in support of the people in the streets in Iran, and the
+support that we have continued to give for that, as well as our
+continued focus on the problem of the depravation of human
+rights in Iran.
+ Mr. Manzullo. No, I am talking about the response, not the
+focus. Don't tell me that the people in the streets were
+supported by the U.S. Government because they were not.
+ Mr. Steinberg. We made clear our strong support for them,
+but at the same time----
+ Mr. Manzullo. But you didn't, that is not correct. They
+were not supported.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think we gave the support that the
+President articulated and the Secretary articulated about our
+strong commitment to their rights to peacefully demonstrate and
+to assemble, the need for the government there to engage with
+them.
+ Mr. Manzullo. Nothing on the order that was given to the
+people in Egypt specifically saying that Mubarak has got to go.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, I also do not--on that side, we
+have not used that expression.
+ Mr. Manzullo. Wait a second, wait a second. You are telling
+me that President Obama has not said in one way or the other
+that Mubarak must go? Is that what you are telling this
+committee?
+ Mr. Steinberg. What the President has said and what the
+Secretary has said is that change has to come, that a
+transition has to come.
+ Mr. Manzullo. Can you give me a yes or no answer to my
+question?
+ Mr. Steinberg. We have not used the expression that you
+identified, sir.
+ Mr. Manzullo. So you said events must go into action and--
+--
+ Mr. Steinberg. Correct.
+ Mr. Manzullo. Everybody in the world understands that
+President Obama's position is to push Mubarak out of office.
+And I am just really astonished that you think that that is an
+amazing statement. So, why didn't we do anything more in Iran?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Again, I think our position has been clearly
+to support of the rights of the people to demonstrate. We have
+made clear that we thought that the election was not conducted
+fairly, openly, that we spoke out against the oppression, we
+spoke out against the violence.
+ Mr. Manzullo. It was clearly not enough. I mean, I don't
+think anybody in this country was interested in Iran turning
+around, was satisfied with the statement of the President of
+the United States. So, what are you going to do now in light of
+the President's involvement in Egypt? What happens if
+demonstrations break out in Tehran? What are you going to do
+now?
+ Mr. Steinberg. We will do as we have done. We have said
+about demonstrations whether they are in Syria or in Iran.
+ Mr. Manzullo. You see, that is the problem, the answer that
+you gave, that you are giving, I know it is well-intended and
+it is obviously factual, but it is weak. And it is the message
+of weakness that gets sent abroad as to what the United States
+is doing. President Obama and the Secretary of State have been
+very clear about what is going on in Egypt, granted the
+demonstrations there have lasted longer than in Tehran. And
+either they said directly or inferentially that Mubarak has to
+leave. And apparently that is going on right now. But it was so
+weak in Iran. Don't you think that the President's statements
+go a lot toward formulating public policy when people take to
+the streets such as they did in Tehran?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Again, I think the President spoke clearly
+to this. But I also think there are other things that we did,
+and partially using tools that you give us, we have identified
+members of the Iranian Government who are human rights abusers
+and imposed sanctions on them. We have taken measures to work
+to appoint a special human rights rapporteur in Iran.
+ Mr. Manzullo. Well, they put three hikers on trial for
+treason.
+ Mr. Steinberg. As we have made very clear and worked very
+hard, including----
+ Mr. Manzullo. Well, nothing is working, so are you going to
+change something in Iran?
+ Mr. Steinberg. We have a very comprehensive strategy in
+Iran which not only deals with the human rights abuses there
+which are substantial, but also the Iranian nuclear program,
+which has led us with the leadership of the Congress working
+together with us to impose the most comprehensive sanctions on
+Iran that have ever been imposed. And have led us to help
+mobilize the international community. And I think the two have
+gone together because the fact of the democratic repression----
+ Mr. Manzullo. Well, in my remaining time, I just want to
+let you know how disappointed we were with the President and
+the very weak response to the people demonstrating for
+democracy in the streets of Tehran back in the summer of 2009.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank, you Mr. Manzullo. And I very
+much agree with you. Mr. Murphy of Connecticut is recognized
+for 5 minutes.
+ Mr. Murphy. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thank
+you, Mr. Steinberg, for sticking around with us. I know we are
+jumping all over the map a bit here, but I want to bring us
+back to one of the subjects at hand today. We are obviously
+continuing to monitor the events as they play out today in
+Egypt. But if what we believe is happening is happening today,
+as you hint at in your testimony, one of the stories of success
+will be the potentially very positive role that a secular,
+independent, well-respected military has played in this ongoing
+transitional process in Egypt.
+ And I mention that as a segue to talk about Lebanon. The
+LAF is at a very different point in its military developmental
+history. We still have members of the Armed Forces there
+communicating via cell phones with each other across the
+Nation. And I want to ask you about how the United States
+continues to play a constructive role in what is really the
+nascent developmental stages of the LAF, and how we make sure
+that our assistance to the Lebanese army continues in the
+tradition of achieving both our goals and the Lebanese
+military's goal going forward in that nation?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Thank you, Congressman. I think you have
+identified obviously an enormously important issue because we
+have seen the possibility and the prospect of development of a
+professional LAF that is responsive to a constitutional
+democratic government as critical to the success of Lebanon and
+particularly to deal with the challenge of Hezbollah and armed
+groups in that society.
+ We want to see a professional civilianly controlled
+military that can exert control over the country on the behalf
+of a democratic government. And we have been encouraged by some
+of the progress that the LAF has made. So we would like to
+sustain with that, and yet we recognize the situation is fluid
+in Lebanon. And we are very vigilant to the possibility that a
+change in the political circumstances might undermine that
+objective.
+ So we focused on two things, which is one, a very vigorous
+commitment to end use monitoring to make sure that none of our
+assistance to the LAF falls into inappropriate hands other than
+the LAF itself. And the record is very strong on that in terms
+of the LAF's ability to monitor and implement that.
+ Also, as we see the political developments move forward, to
+make sure that the independence and the role of the LAF is not
+compromised and that any implication that that might have for
+our assistance.
+ We would hope that we would see a continuation of the
+strong support for the LAF. It is a critical component of the
+sovereignty and the integrity of the country as long as it is
+associated with a democratic transparent open, a government
+that is not the products of outside interference.
+ Mr. Murphy. Can you talk a little bit more about benchmarks
+and milestones? How do we moving forward--I understand that our
+military aid there is obviously interdependent with the
+political developments in Lebanon. You talk a little bit about
+how we make sure that the military and the LAF are hitting
+benchmarks and milestones that assure that we are making a wise
+investment?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Well, we have a very robust engagement with
+the leadership. I believe it was just 2 or 3 weeks ago that
+General Mattis of CENTCOM was out there meeting with the
+Lebanese leadership. And I think that is that engagement. The
+training that we do with them, the professional development
+that we do with them that allows us to watch their progress, to
+identify programs that continue to help develop their
+professionalization. And clearly, it is linked to the political
+developments because their ability to do this requires the
+strong support of the political institutions that allow them to
+not only develop their professional capabilities and to use
+this equipment but also to have the mandate to extend their
+authority throughout the country.
+ Mr. Murphy. And just finally, to the Prime Minister
+designate, you talk about, in your testimony, making sure that
+he makes good on his pledge to build an inclusive government.
+How do we judge that inclusiveness? What do we look to as the
+keys to know whether we have an inclusive government that
+continues to be a recipient of U.S. economic and military aid?
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think we look both to the
+representativeness of that government to make sure that no
+important constituency in the Lebanese society is cut out,
+particularly obviously a concern with the evolution that the
+Sunni population is appropriately represented. But also to make
+sure across the political spectrum, that we have an inclusive
+government that includes the March 14th coalition, and it
+includes the voices that have been the progressive voices in
+Lebanon, and which, I think, it will be something that we
+supported strongly. So we believe that those voices need to be
+included in any government going forward.
+ Mr. Murphy. Thank you.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you very much.
+ So pleased to yield 5 minutes to the vice chair on the
+Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, Mr. Pence of
+Indiana.
+ Mr. Pence. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I want to thank you
+for calling this, what turns out to be extraordinarily timely
+hearing. I always want to make a point, I want to thank the
+Secretary for his service to the country, for his distinguished
+career, it is an honor to you have back before the committee.
+ For some reason, this feels a little bit like deja vu all
+over again, I am sure it does to you, Mr. Secretary, with your
+long career in these matters. And frankly, with word of the
+potential eminent and historic change that could take place in
+Egypt before the turn of the clock today, on that part of the
+world, this conversation is extremely important.
+ I must say, as the ranking member knows, as we partnered
+together in the summer of 2009 to author a resolution that
+passed this Chamber nearly unanimously and passed the Senate
+unanimously, my first inclination is to stand with the people,
+to stand with those who are clamoring for basic human rights,
+for freedoms, for more access to the democratic process. And I
+carry that bias into this conversation.
+ I support those who continue to call for democratic
+reforms, I am grateful for the State Department and for the
+administration broadly, expressions of support for an orderly
+transition and the recognition of universal human rights.
+ Let me, though, by way of raising an issue to you, let me,
+though, express a word of caution. One of the first things that
+I learned as a member of this committee traveling into that
+part of the world was the enormous importance of Egypt, and to
+the history of the region, not just at this time, but obviously
+through the millennium. The developments in Egypt are of
+enormous consequence to U.S. strategic interest, and I would
+say, most especially, to the interest of what I like to refer
+to fondly as our most cherished ally, Israel.
+ And so while I know the folks at the administration has
+largely been and your remarks have largely been on insuring an
+orderly transition, I am concerned about an orderly transition
+to what, or an orderly transition to whom? And specifically, I
+find my mind drifting back to history, and to lessons of
+history. Edmund Burke, famously a member of Parliament, one of
+the strongest supporters of the revolution that took place in
+the colonies, here in the United States, but also one of the
+harshest critics of what happened in France. Edmund Burke
+warned that different from the American Revolution, which was
+largely born on a reach for democracy and a foundation of
+respect for the rule of law, the French Revolution was
+something different. And he warned of nefarious factions which
+could have opportunity, his words now, ``to become master of
+your assembly and the master of your whole republic.''
+ And with the news the CIA Director, I am told just moments
+ago told a public meeting of the House Intelligence Committee
+that he expects President Hosni Mubarak to step down this
+evening.
+ I guess my question to you, Mr. Secretary, very sincerely
+is where is that leading us? Who is that leading us to? I know
+that the new Vice President has expressed and demonstrating a
+willingness to engage the Muslim Brotherhood in a dialogue, an
+organization that has largely outlawed in Egypt for decades.
+But I guess my first question is, do you expect President
+Mubarak to step down, does the State Department anticipate
+that?
+ And secondly, what is the effect of that? Where is that
+leading us? And thirdly, can you speak to are we sending a
+message sufficiently to this transition authority dominated as
+it is by the military in Egypt, that we expect not only an
+orderly transition, but we expect order at the end of it. We
+expect, if we are to continue that nearly a minimum of $1
+billion a year in foreign aid that goes directly to Egypt, the
+military coordination support that we provide, that we expect a
+successor government to respect the treaties and the alliances
+and the allies and the interests of the United States if we are
+to continue to go forward with that foreign aid and with the
+nature of the alliance that we have had with Egypt.
+ So I would love your responses in whatever time the
+chairman will allow.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. 7 seconds. Plenty of time.
+ Mr. Steinberg. ``Yes'' is probably a good answer. But to
+the last question, the answer is yes. We made clear what we do
+expect--and I think that is the way we tried to engage
+throughout this process is to set down a set of principles that
+we expect the process to embody and the outcome to embody, and
+that that is what we will judge it by.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you, Mr. Pence.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega, our colleague from American Samoa.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. Thank you, Madam Chair.
+ And, Mr. Secretary, I do personally want to welcome you
+before the committee. And I also want to express my deepest
+appreciation to the service that you have given to our country.
+ And I want to offer my personal welcome to one of our
+committee staffers who have just returned from his tour in the
+military. I wish I had the same reception when I came back from
+Vietnam, Madam Chair. That wasn't my experience, for those of
+us who had the unfortunate experience of having served in
+Vietnam.
+ Mr. Secretary, I have often heard people say how important
+the Golden Rule is; the Golden Rule, meaning that treat your
+fellow men as you would like to be treated. I have also heard
+another interpretation of the Golden Rule, and that is, he who
+has the gold makes the rule.
+ What I am getting at, Mr. Secretary, for some 30 years
+now--and it has been one way of keeping the peace especially
+and what took place historically between Israel and Egypt, and
+for the 30-year period we have given well over $65 billion in
+financial assistance to Egypt, and $36 billion of that went to
+Egypt's military defense system.
+ I am curious if--and I suspected from what my friend from
+Indiana has just given his concerns for which I share that same
+concern with Mr. Pence, but it seems that more and more that it
+is coming out in the current crisis in Egypt is that the
+military and the Muslim Brotherhood seem to be the two main
+factions that are going to have a lot of influence and impact
+on the future of where Egypt is going as far as its future is
+concerned.
+ Now, I have noticed that you have given in your statement
+that has been part of the administration's policy we want the
+people of Egypt to determine their own future. But would it be
+correct for me to say that in that mix, the military and the
+Muslim Brotherhood definitely are going to be very important
+factors in determining Egypt's future.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, I think what is important is
+that the military play the kind of role we expect the military
+to play in a democratic society, which is to support democratic
+governance and to respect the rights of the people. And I think
+we have been encouraged over the past several weeks that the
+military has played a constructive role. But it is not for the
+military to make the government, it is for the people to make
+the government, and that is what we would expect. And we would
+expect as we move forward with the democratic, inclusive
+government that the military would be in service of that.
+ We have obviously talked a lot today about the Muslim
+Brotherhood. I can only reiterate the critical view that we
+have, which is that we will look to what government is formed,
+and we will hold it to a set of principles, and we will expect
+the members of the government to uphold those principles, and
+we will expect that they are responsive to what we believe is
+the yearnings of the people on the street. And that is the way
+we will judge our relationship going forward.
+ I don't think we want to be naive, but I think we are
+hopeful that what we have seen is a strong sense that there is
+elements of civil society of the people, the Council of Wise
+Men and others, the people that Congressman Royce talked about,
+that can form a strong, stable, democratic government there,
+and we need to do everything we can to support them.
+ Mr. Faleomavaega. I know my time is running, but I just
+wanted to share another irksome situation as I want with my
+friend from New York. The fact that 350 million people in the
+Arab community's future rests on the fact that these two
+countries, Saudi Arabia and Egypt--that if these two countries
+falter, there is definitely going to be some very serious
+problems coming out of that.
+ I say irksome to the fact that one of the main issues that
+always seems to come into the equation when we talk about the
+Middle East is oil. My sense of irksome is the fact that we
+have spent almost $1 trillion in getting rid of Saddam Hussein,
+and expenditures of lives of our own soldiers, and the amount
+of energy and resources, and yet when it came time to divvy up
+the fortunes, some 30 major oil companies that conducted
+biddings of the contracting and the oil to be extracted from
+Iraq, to my surprise China was the winner of the bidding
+process.
+ Now, correct me if I am wrong on this, but the fact that it
+was our blood, our money, our resources, and supposedly having
+some sense of benefit as well for our country, but as it turned
+out, China was the beneficiary. Am I correct on this?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, there are a number of American
+firms who are there. Exxon for sure, and Shell probably. We
+have worked with them to encourage them to participate. We have
+worked with the Iraqi Government to create the conditions that
+would make this attractive to American firms.
+ One of the problems, and it is an ongoing problem with the
+Iraqi Government, is that they haven't really opened this up to
+the kind of investment that we would like to see. It is a big
+priority of the engagement, and as the new government is formed
+there, we will continue to push this to make it because we
+think American firms have a lot to contribute to the economic
+and energy future of Iraq.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
+ I am pleased to yield to Mr. Duncan of South Carolina for 5
+minutes.
+ Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I hope that I have
+more than 30 seconds than you gave me the other day.
+ Thank you so much, Mr. Steinberg, for being here. A lot of
+great questions have been asked today, and you all have really
+delved into a lot of the subjects that are concerning for me.
+So I am just going to piggyback on Mr. Burton's comments
+earlier about energy independence.
+ Instability in the Middle East. When I was a young boy, I
+remember the gas shortages. I remember the crisis that we had
+in Iran. I remember countries around the world where you had
+revolutionary factions, and you had groups that weren't
+friendly to the United States step into the void. So it is very
+concerning to me and the folks that I represent back in the
+State of South Carolina that we have stability in the Middle
+East.
+ We have a port in Charleston that receives shipments that
+come through the Suez and the Panama, so it is important that
+for trade and economic prosperity in this country that
+stability in the Suez region is maintained, stability in not
+only the North Africa and Middle East, but also East Africa. So
+there are a lot of different things that are concerning here.
+ So who steps into the void in this process is interesting.
+And you stated that the administration would adhere to
+consistent principles regardless of who was in power. And the
+question I have for you, and taken in the light of stability,
+and taken in the light of what our energy independence needs
+are--and let me just segue to that for just a second because
+you mentioned other sources of energy.
+ I think it is imperative that the United States and the
+administration's policies look at American emergency
+independence and use American resources that lessen our
+dependence on foreign sources, because we are seeing rising gas
+prices which affect input costs, which affect commodity prices.
+So it is a huge trickle-down effect.
+ So let me segue back into is the administration actively
+working to prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from being involved
+in this process of new governance in Egypt.
+ Mr. Steinberg. Congressman, I would say that we are
+actively working to make sure that the government that emerges
+is an inclusive, tolerant, democratic one that respects the
+rights of women, minorities, religious minorities and the like.
+It is not focused on one particular group; it is on all groups.
+We want the principle of anybody participating in a future
+Egyptian Government to sustain those values. And anybody and
+any group that isn't consistent with that, we would not support
+their being a part of the government.
+ Mr. Duncan. So along those lines, what specific steps is
+the State Department or this administration taking along those
+lines?
+ Mr. Steinberg. That is precisely why we have been so active
+in pushing the Egyptian Government to engage in a prompt,
+orderly transition, because we believe the best chance of
+getting that tolerant outcome that we want with the kinds of
+people that Congressman Royce talked about is to move forward
+with the process and to engage with those forces, because those
+are the forces that can come together and create both democracy
+and stability in Egypt.
+ Mr. Duncan. Has the administration, in your support for
+clear and consistent principles, stated to Egypt that you would
+not support the Muslim Brotherhood in any shape, form, or
+fashion?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Again, Congressman, I don't think we single
+out any individual group. We say what we would support, and we
+would not support those who are not consistent with those
+principles.
+ Mr. Duncan. I would hope that the State Department policy
+would be to support factions that are friendly to the United
+States, friendly to the United States' economic interests, and
+friendly to the United States as far as national security
+interests.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think we feel comfortable, if you look at
+history, that democratic governments where people really have a
+voice, and they get to choose, and they are not intimidated,
+and there is diversity are friendly to the United States. If
+you look at the democracies around the world, almost to a
+country those are our friends.
+ So I think that is why we are so committed to moving
+forward with this process, because we do think it achieves
+exactly what you have identified.
+ Mr. Duncan. Thank you.
+ I yield back.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much.
+ And to round out the question-and-answer period, I am so
+pleased to yield as our last interviewer Mr. Griffin for the
+Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia, the vice chair of that
+subcommittee.
+ Thank you, Mr. Griffin.
+ Mr. Griffin. Thank you, Madam Chair.
+ We had some testimony yesterday regarding the potential for
+al-Qaeda to exploit some of the instability in northern Africa,
+particularly in Egypt, and I just wanted to get your comments
+on that. There was a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Kenneth
+Pollack on this yesterday, and understanding that this may be
+down the road a bit, sort of intermediate term and not
+immediate, and also understanding that Egypt has a history of
+doing a pretty good job of keeping some of the more extreme
+elements under control, could you comment on whether al-Qaeda
+is looking to recruit or take advantage of the power vacuum in
+the region?
+ Mr. Steinberg. Without making a specific reference to that,
+because I don't know specifically that they are, but I would
+have to--I think we have to be alert to the possibility that
+they would. I think that we know that they are looking for any
+opportunities to advance their agenda in any place that they
+can find it. And certainly places where there are real vacuums,
+like we see in Somalia, are very dangerous places, which is
+precisely why we do believe it is so important to have this
+orderly, sustained process, because we think it is the best
+antidote about giving extremists and terrorist groups the
+opportunity to make inroads.
+ Mr. Griffin. Well, the article that I was looking at
+yesterday tends to say that this may not be the most likely
+course, particularly in the short term. But as we know, al-
+Qaeda has roots even at the highest echelons in Egypt. So you
+don't know of any specific, identifiable antidotes or
+information that you can share with regard to al-Qaeda in that
+region? You just identify it as a possibility.
+ Mr. Steinberg. I think it is something we have to be alert
+to. Obviously to get into a little more detail, we would
+probably have to do this in a closed session. But I would say
+the most important thing is to be vigilant to it and to take
+the steps now to not to let the circumstances arise, because I
+feel very confident that the voices in the streets in Tahrir
+Square are not voices that are--voices that are looking to al-
+Qaeda as their salvation. So we need to make sure that they are
+the ones that prevail in this situation.
+ Mr. Griffin. Thank you for that.
+ Chairman Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much for your excellent
+testimony. We look forward to getting some of those questions
+in writing from you. And I would especially appreciate your
+responses and the Department of State's responses to the U.N.
+overpayment issue and the refund.
+ Thank you so much. And this committee is now adjourned.
+ Thank you, sir.
+ [Whereupon, at 12:50 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
+
+
+
+
+ A P P E N D I X
+
+ ----------
+
+
+ Material Submitted for the Hearings Record
+
+
+
+ __________
+ IFES Briefing Paper, ``Elections in Egypt: Key Challenes for Credible
+and Competitive Elections,'' submitted for the record by the Honorable
+ Howard L. Berman, a Representative in Congress from the State of
+ California
+
+
+
+
+
+