tsai3904
02-13-2013, 10:28 AM
Bipartisan Senate Group Calls for Egypt Aid Restructure
The Senate’s rejection last month of an effort to end all military aid to Egypt showed lawmakers aren’t ready yet to give up on Washington’s long-standing strategic alliance with Cairo, despite the anti-Western rhetoric and repressive tactics used by the country’s new Islamist government.
Still, a bipartisan group of senators would like to restructure the annual $1.3 billion military aid package for Egypt, America’s second-largest recipient of aid, after Israel.
The idea is to shift that assistance away from fighter jets, tanks and other big, conventional weapons systems that Egypt has been buying from the United States and direct money toward programs that would address Egypt’s most immediate security challenges, such as the deterioration of internal police forces and a growing terrorist threat in the Sinai Peninsula.
“The Egyptians don’t need more F-16s and tanks,” said Arizona Republican John McCain, a member of both the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. “They need a totally different set of assets than they have now.”
This new approach, also embraced by Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East, and Tennessee’s Bob Corker, the full committee’s ranking Republican, dovetails with an Obama administration effort to persuade the Egyptian military to embrace a greater counter-terrorist role, particularly against heavily armed Bedouin tribesmen and al-Qaida fighters who now roam the Sinai with impunity.
More:
http://www.rollcall.com/news/bipartisan_senate_group_calls_for_egypt_aid_restru cture-222378-1.html
The Senate’s rejection last month of an effort to end all military aid to Egypt showed lawmakers aren’t ready yet to give up on Washington’s long-standing strategic alliance with Cairo, despite the anti-Western rhetoric and repressive tactics used by the country’s new Islamist government.
Still, a bipartisan group of senators would like to restructure the annual $1.3 billion military aid package for Egypt, America’s second-largest recipient of aid, after Israel.
The idea is to shift that assistance away from fighter jets, tanks and other big, conventional weapons systems that Egypt has been buying from the United States and direct money toward programs that would address Egypt’s most immediate security challenges, such as the deterioration of internal police forces and a growing terrorist threat in the Sinai Peninsula.
“The Egyptians don’t need more F-16s and tanks,” said Arizona Republican John McCain, a member of both the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. “They need a totally different set of assets than they have now.”
This new approach, also embraced by Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East, and Tennessee’s Bob Corker, the full committee’s ranking Republican, dovetails with an Obama administration effort to persuade the Egyptian military to embrace a greater counter-terrorist role, particularly against heavily armed Bedouin tribesmen and al-Qaida fighters who now roam the Sinai with impunity.
More:
http://www.rollcall.com/news/bipartisan_senate_group_calls_for_egypt_aid_restru cture-222378-1.html