Kerry meets secular opposition figures, in Egypt

John Kerry has invited and met with numerous Egyptian secular opposition leaders in an apparent bid to undermine the government of the nation’s Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.

In his Saturday meeting with the nation’s opposition leaders, “human rights” activists and business leaders, Kerry, who is in Cairo as part of his 9-nation tour of the Middle East and Europe, further addressed Egypt’s political and economic problems, underlining the need for the country to adopt economic measures to qualify for a loan by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and American financial aid and investments.

A number of well-known opposition leaders, however, kept away from meetings with the visiting top American diplomat “for fear of appearing too close to the United States” merely two years following the ouster of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Those that declined Kerry’s invitation to the Saturday meeting at his Cairo hotel included National Salvation Front leaders Hamdeen Sabahi and [former IAEA chief] Mohamed ElBaradei as well as former Egyptian foreign minister and Arab League chief Amr Moussa.

However, Kerry spoke to ElBaradei in a telephone call after arriving in Egypt on Saturday. Moussa also held a “private” meeting with the top US official “out of the view of cameras,” the report said.

The “so-called opposition meeting arranged by the US Embassy is a collection of ‘feloul,’ ” or remnants of the old regime, “and minor party leaders who do not represent the youth of Egypt,” said the country’s 6th of April movement in a statement on an Internet social networking site, as quoted in the report.
Kerry, meanwhile, described his “closed-door session” with opposition figures as “productive,” but also warned that “it is paramount, essential, urgent, that the Egyptian economy get stronger, get back on its feet.”

The government of President Morsi remains at an impasse with the nation’s predominantly secular and leftist opposition parties, while the umbrella National Salvation Front has called for a boycott of upcoming parliamentary polls to protest “a national constitution whose strong Islamist stamp also worries some in the United States,” the daily adds.

Kerry, who is due to meet with President Morsi on Sunday, told reporters following his meeting with secular opposition figures that he had not heard anything from them that suggests they may change their minds about boycotting the upcoming elections.

The US official also tried to press Morsi’s government to take what many observers view as politically controversial economic steps that are crucial to securing international loans and outside investment.

Meanwhile, nearly $450 million in US aid to Egypt has been frozen by the American lawmakers, and the IMF, which functions under major US and European influences, has held off on loans and debt relief worth over $4 billion.

Egypt has emerged as the most important Arab ally of the United States for the past four decades, with the ties built largely around Egypt’s commitment to abide by the 1979 Camp David peace treaty with the US-sponsored Israeli regime.