U.S. Embassy Refuge in Egypt?

U.S. Embassy Refuge in Egypt?(PressurePoints).By Eliott Abrams.
There is no better summary of how U.S.-Egyptian relations have changed than news stories reporting that “a number of Americans whom Egyptian authorities have been barred from leaving the country have sought refuge at the American Embassy in Cairo.” They need refuge because they may well be arrested without this protection.
Barred from leaving the country? Refuge in a U.S. embassy, behind the Marine guards? Rather odd for a country that receives $1.3 billion a year in military aid. While Hosni Mubarak and his regime hated the American NGOs–principally Freedom House, the International Republican Institute for International Affairs, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs–for promoting human rights and democracy, under Mubarak matters never reached this point.
Two comments seem in order. The first is that the authorities, meaning the Foreign Ministry and Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), should have been given a deadline for resolving this problem when it arose on December 29. It has been over a month now, which is too long. Aid to Egypt should be frozen until these Americans can leave the country, and it should not be resumed until the materials taken from their offices are returned.
The second comment is that the person behind all these problems is clearly identifiable–and has been identified in the press. She is Fayza Aboul Naga, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation. She was appointed to this post by President Mubarak and has miraculously managed to hold on to it throughout Egypt’s year of turmoil. She is a one-woman wrecking crew when it comes to U.S.-Egypt relations, and the democracy NGOs have long been a particular obsession of hers.
If Egypt gets away with banning our democracy NGOs and threatening to jail their staff, if officials who lead such actions are later given warm official receptions in Washington, those NGOs may as well close up show: every undemocratic regime will start treating them the same way. We need to stand up for them strongly–and now.Read the full story here.