Amid protests at home, Egypt mobilizes strong lobbying force in Washington

[Joanne98]

Source: WP

After Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak renewed a draconian security law last year, a bipartisan group of 15 U.S. senators pushed legislation condemning the country's record on human rights and free elections.

But the nonbinding resolution went nowhere thanks to a concerted and intense lobbying campaign by Egypt and its U.S. lobbyists. The measure's backers failed in a last-ditch attempt to pass the resolution in the waning days of the last Congress, just weeks before massive protests broke out on the streets of Cairo.

"They would view something like that as an unwarranted intrusion into their affairs, to the level of a grand insult," said former Connecticut congressman Toby Moffett (D), one of Egypt's chief U.S. lobbyists. "It was a very big deal to them."

The episode underscores the deep and long-standing clout enjoyed by Egypt in Washington, which now hands out about $1.5 billion in military and other foreign aid to the Arab nation each year. Egypt spends nearly $2 million annually on lobbying and public relations efforts in the United States, much of it focused on maintaining the two nations' uneasy alliance.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/01/AR2011020102445.html

[dipsydoodle]

1. $1.5 billion in military and other foreign aid

and suprise suprise the majority of that isn't military hardware. The aid directly funds Mubak's Central Security Force to keep the population at bay.

The Egyptian people are now aware of this.

Lobby away suckers. There is also obviously some irony in the fact that the aid also pays for its own lobbying.