Laura Rozen
Politico
11/2/2010
Top Obama National Security Council officials met Tuesday with a bipartisan group of Washington foreign policy experts who advocate that the United States push for more free and fair Egyptian elections.
The National Security Council’s top two senior Middle East officials Dennis Ross and Dan Shapiro, as well as the NSC’s top human rights and development/democracy officials Samantha Power and Gayle Smith attended the meeting on the Obama administration side, meeting attendees told POLITICO.
Representing the bipartisan Egypt working group at the NSC meeting Tuesday were its two co-founders, Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution and Michele Dunne of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as the Project on Middle East Democracy’s Andrew Albertson, former Bush NSC Middle East and democracy official Elliott Abrams, Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski, the Center for American Progress’s Brian Katulis, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Robert Satloff.
“Today National Security staff briefed the Members of the Working Group on Egypt on the Administration’s ongoing efforts to promote respect for human rights and a vibrant civil society, open political competition, and credible and transparent elections in Egypt, including the a comprehensive set of actions that support these goals in Egypt, for example with new programing and funding in support of civil society,” NSC Spokesman Mike Hammer told POLITICO. “The National Security staff also noted that the Administration is continuing to press the Egyptians to open political competition and allow domestic and international monitors.”
Participants who attended the meeting were reluctant to get into the substantive details of what the NSC officials discussed in the hour-long meeting. But they suggested the meeting comes in the midst of the Obama administration conducting a review of its policy on democracy in the Middle East, and a significantly stepped-up focus by senior Obama administration officials on the Egyptian democracy issue in particular…
The article continues at Politico.com
H/T Glenn Beck 3/30/2011 on FNC
