CONFERENCE REPORT
"Egypt's Experience with the American Military and Economic Assistance Bills and an Analysis of the Kerry Lugar Bill" at the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute.
On
Wednesday October 28th, 2009
Guest Speaker: Dr. Smach Abdallah
(Deputy Head of Al-Ahram Daily)
The South Asian Strategic Stability Institute (SASSI) is an independent, autonomous, non-profit research institute working on the policy-oriented research discourses about South Asian Security. Its work focuses on strategic stability of South Asia and particularly on Pakistan. However SASSI's remit goes beyond Nuclear Stability to include the wider issues of chemical and biological weapons, conventional force balance and civil military relations.
South Asian Strategic Stability Institute arranged an in house debate on "Egypt's Experience with the American Military and Economic Assistance Bills and an Analysis of the Kerry Lugar Bill".
DG Maria Sultan in her introductory remarks highlighted the importance of the talk in the context of Pakistan and Egypt. Followed by her Research Fellow Ms Ghazala Nayyar introduced the guest to the audience.
The speaker Dr. Smaeh Abdallah started his presentation in the context of US and Egyptian relationship. He emphasized a point that United States of America is a super power and we have to be realistic in accepting that. He said that Egypt should get equal treatment by the United States as the Israel gets. He further emphasized that Egypt with 70 million population gets only 1.7 billion dollars annual aid by the United Stated, and Israel which is only 7.2 million population gets 3.1 billion aid.
Moreover he said that discrimination never ends here; there is no comparison of military assistance to Israel and Egypt. Israel can work for the development of their armed forces, and also they can carry out Research and Development programmes with the US. But in Egyptian case it has been denied such benefits under the US annual aid. In addition Israel unlike any other recipient of the US financial aid receive its aid in a lump sum during the first 30 days of the fiscal year, allowing it to invest the funds in the U.S. and earn interest on them.
Furthermore he said that in 2007 US withheld 100 million dollars of Egyptian Aid and added conditions in the bill of the following nature:
All these demands were rejected by the Egyptian government asking US government not to interfere in the internal matters of the Egypt. Eventually withheld aid was released without any condition. On Pakistan he said that Pakistan should decide about its own future, the recent aid bill for Pakistan is a direct infringement into Pakistan's internal affairs.
After his presentation DG Maria sultan invited Sobia Saeed Paracha, to highlight the over all context and nature of the bill as well as the financial break up of the related assistance, she elaborated the working and implementation of the Kerry-Lugar Act. Next to it Ms. Ghazala Nayyar critically evaluated the mechanism of the Kerry-Lugar Act and how the auditing of the aid and assistance strategy reports would help in implementation of the Act. Afterwards Ms. Sajida Mansoor talked about the waivers and conditionalities related to certain assistance mentioned in the Act. She further illuminated that the US Secretary of State may waive the limitations related to assistance if he or she feels that it is in the national security interests of United States of America.
Research Fellow Mr. Masood Ur Rehman did a comparative analysis of Kerry-Lugar act with recently introduced bill H. R. 696, in which there were some sections which had some relevance with the Kerry-Lugar bill. In his comparative analysis he emphasized that US aid to both countries also allows US to the internal matters of these countries, which is a direct infringement in the internal affairs of the countries, secondly in both bills, waivers have been issued, in Pakistan's case it was Secretary of defense and secretary of state and in Pakistan.
In his concluding remarks he reiterated that United States is the super power and we should maintain balanced relationship with it. Stability matters a lot, which can challenge the super power.