CAIRO: Before embarking on his first visit to the United States since becoming Egypt’s first freely elected president, Muhammad Mursi says Washington in the past earned ill will in the Middle East by backing dictators but now he envisions the two countries being “real friends.”
Mursi is heading to New York early Monday to attend the UN General Assembly meeting. In an interview with the New York Times published Sunday, he also said that the United States should not judge Egypt by its own standards — an apparent reaction to resentment in the Muslim country against an anti-Islam video produced in the United States.
It was his first interview with a US publication since becoming president in the aftermath of the 2011 overthrow of Washington’s key strategic ally, Hosni Mubarak.
Obama told a Spanish-language network this month that the United States did not consider Egypt’s Islamist government either an ally or an enemy.
When asked whether he thought of the United States as an ally in an interview with the New York Times, Mursi said: “That depends on your definition of ally.”
The newspaper also said Mursi indicated Egypt would not be hostile to the West but would not be as compliant as Mubarak.
“Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region,” he said, referring — according to the newspaper — to backing dictatorial governments over popular opposition and supporting Israel over the Palestinians.
Speaking before traveling to New York for the UN General Assembly, Mursi said Washington needed to change its approach to the Arab world, show greater respect for its values and help build a Palestinian state to reduce pent up anger in the region, the newspaper said.
“As long as peace and justice are not fulfilled for the Palestinians, then the treaty remains unfulfilled,” he said, referring to Egypt’s U.S-brokered peace treaty with Israel that was signed in 1979.
Mursi, who travels to New York on Monday, is not scheduled to meet Obama during his US trip.
A spokesman for Mursi could not immediately be reached for comment, nor could a US embassy official.
Obama has thanked Mursi for securing the US Embassy during protests against a film made in the United States that mocked Prophet Muhammad (praise be upon him) and sparked worldwide demonstrations and violence.
Obama’s rival in the US presidential race, Mitt Romney, called for a tougher line with Egypt after protesters scaled the compound wall and tore down the US flag on Sept. 11.
Police clashed with demonstrators for four days after that incident and barriers were erected to stop them getting near the compound.
In a letter, Obama repeated Washington’s condemnation of the film and said he looked forward to working with Mursi to build on the “strategic partnership,” Mursi’s official Facebook page said on Sunday.
“In his letter, President Obama thanked the Egyptian president for Egyptian efforts to secure the mission of the United States in Cairo,” according to the site.
Egypt was a close ally of the United States under Hosni Mubarak, whose 30-year rule was ended by a popular uprising last year. The US government, a major aid donor to Egypt and long wary of Islamists, only opened formal contacts last year with the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that propelled Mursi to power.
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Mursi wants ‘real’ friendship with US
Mursi wants ‘real’ friendship with US
’Pay or he dies’, families told as more Egyptians risk Mediterranean crossing
- Weeks after Hamdy Ibrahim left his village in Egypt’s Nile Delta hoping to reach Europe, his brother’s phone rang with a chilling message from Libya: pay now or the boy would die
KAFR ABDALLAH AZIZAH: Weeks after Hamdy Ibrahim left his village in Egypt’s Nile Delta hoping to reach Europe, his brother’s phone rang with a chilling message from Libya: pay now or the boy would die.
A smuggler was on the line, demanding 190,000 pounds ($4,000) to secure the 18-year-old’s place on a boat, part of a rising exodus that last year made Egyptians the top African and second-largest global group of irregular migrants to Europe.
“I told him we couldn’t afford it,” his brother Youssef told AFP from Kafr Abdallah Aziza in Sharqiya, an hour’s drive from Cairo.
“But he warned: ‘Handle it like the other families do. Otherwise he’ll be thrown into the sea.’“
Hamdy left in November with a dozen peers, vanishing without a word after contacting smugglers online. Soon, calls poured in from Libya.
Families were told the men would “be slaughtered or thrown into the mountains or sea” if they did not pay, said 55-year-old Abed Gouda, whose brother Mohamed was among them.
Desperate parents borrowed heavily, sold gold and gave up what little they had to save their sons. But weeks later, they learned the boat carrying the group had sunk near the Greek island of Crete.
Seventeen people died — including six from the village — and 15 remain missing, among them Hamdy and Mohamed.
More than 17,000 Egyptians reached Europe via the Mediterranean last year, while 1,328 people of all nationalities died or disappeared on the world’s deadliest migration route, according to Frontex and the UN.
In recent years, a currency collapse and soaring inflation have deepened poverty nationwide, leaving much of Egypt’s more than 50 million people under 30 feeling they have no future at home.
In Kafr Abdallah Aziza, the pressures are clear: cracked irrigation canals cut jagged lines through unpaved roads, carrying only a trickle of water to parched fields.
Women ride past on donkey carts, piled high with vegetables, jolting over potholes deep enough to trap a wheel.
Half-built brick houses sit on once-fertile land, where families eke out meagre livings through small trades or day labor.
When AFP visited, relatives of the missing packed into a local elder’s cramped home, showing WhatsApp and Facebook groups filled with blurry images, unverified lists and rumors.
’Lack of hope’
“Half of our young people are now considering illegal migration,” said village pharmacist Refaat Abdelsamad, 40.
Since 2022, the Egyptian pound has lost over two-thirds of its value. Bread prices have tripled and fuel costs have risen four times in two years.
That same year, Egyptians were already among the largest groups attempting irregular migration, with the UN recording more than 21,000 arrivals.
“Desperation and economic deterioration are major factors,” Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told AFP.
There is a “lack of hope that things will improve.”
Hamdy earned just 500 Egyptian pounds ($10) a week as a plumber. He left, his brother said, because he “just wanted a better life.”
After Egypt curbed irregular departures from its own shores in 2016, routes shifted west through Libya, where smugglers move migrants across the desert in minibuses and pickup trucks — a journey Nour Khalil of the Egypt Refugees Platform calls “more dangerous.”
The UN says Egyptians rely on “well-established smuggling networks” that charge high fees while survivors report “arbitrary detention, torture, rape, sexual slavery, starvation and forced labor,” according to French charity SOS Mediterranee.
In 2024, the EU signed a 7.4-billion-euro economic development deal with Cairo, in part to curb irregular migration.
But Kaldas said border controls miss the root cause: “People need to feel secure in their homes.”
Across Egypt, Khalil said migration has become “a widespread goal,” even among educated professionals.
“Those who can leave legally do so. Those who can’t are pushed into irregular migration, even if the journey carries extreme risks,” he told AFP.
’I’d do it again’
In Kafr Moustafa Effendi, families still mourn the dozens of young men who died or vanished in 2023 when a rusty fishing boat carrying 750 migrants capsized off Greece — one of the deadliest shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, now the subject of multiple court cases over alleged coast guard negligence.
Islam and El-Sayed, both 18 then, were aboard after their families scraped together 140,000 pounds each, their cousin Abdallah Ghanem told AFP.
“Back then, people caught minibuses to Libya as casually as if they were traveling to another town in Egypt.”
Despite the grief, the hopeful cling to success stories.
Construction worker Hassan Darwish left Sharqiya in 2023, believing he had “no future” in Egypt.
Now 24 and living in Rome, he says he earns about $700 monthly while awaiting asylum.
“I saw horrors,” he told AFP by phone. “But I’d do it again.”
He now supports his mother and sick brother, which “would never have been possible in Egypt.”
A smuggler was on the line, demanding 190,000 pounds ($4,000) to secure the 18-year-old’s place on a boat, part of a rising exodus that last year made Egyptians the top African and second-largest global group of irregular migrants to Europe.
“I told him we couldn’t afford it,” his brother Youssef told AFP from Kafr Abdallah Aziza in Sharqiya, an hour’s drive from Cairo.
“But he warned: ‘Handle it like the other families do. Otherwise he’ll be thrown into the sea.’“
Hamdy left in November with a dozen peers, vanishing without a word after contacting smugglers online. Soon, calls poured in from Libya.
Families were told the men would “be slaughtered or thrown into the mountains or sea” if they did not pay, said 55-year-old Abed Gouda, whose brother Mohamed was among them.
Desperate parents borrowed heavily, sold gold and gave up what little they had to save their sons. But weeks later, they learned the boat carrying the group had sunk near the Greek island of Crete.
Seventeen people died — including six from the village — and 15 remain missing, among them Hamdy and Mohamed.
More than 17,000 Egyptians reached Europe via the Mediterranean last year, while 1,328 people of all nationalities died or disappeared on the world’s deadliest migration route, according to Frontex and the UN.
In recent years, a currency collapse and soaring inflation have deepened poverty nationwide, leaving much of Egypt’s more than 50 million people under 30 feeling they have no future at home.
In Kafr Abdallah Aziza, the pressures are clear: cracked irrigation canals cut jagged lines through unpaved roads, carrying only a trickle of water to parched fields.
Women ride past on donkey carts, piled high with vegetables, jolting over potholes deep enough to trap a wheel.
Half-built brick houses sit on once-fertile land, where families eke out meagre livings through small trades or day labor.
When AFP visited, relatives of the missing packed into a local elder’s cramped home, showing WhatsApp and Facebook groups filled with blurry images, unverified lists and rumors.
’Lack of hope’
“Half of our young people are now considering illegal migration,” said village pharmacist Refaat Abdelsamad, 40.
Since 2022, the Egyptian pound has lost over two-thirds of its value. Bread prices have tripled and fuel costs have risen four times in two years.
That same year, Egyptians were already among the largest groups attempting irregular migration, with the UN recording more than 21,000 arrivals.
“Desperation and economic deterioration are major factors,” Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told AFP.
There is a “lack of hope that things will improve.”
Hamdy earned just 500 Egyptian pounds ($10) a week as a plumber. He left, his brother said, because he “just wanted a better life.”
After Egypt curbed irregular departures from its own shores in 2016, routes shifted west through Libya, where smugglers move migrants across the desert in minibuses and pickup trucks — a journey Nour Khalil of the Egypt Refugees Platform calls “more dangerous.”
The UN says Egyptians rely on “well-established smuggling networks” that charge high fees while survivors report “arbitrary detention, torture, rape, sexual slavery, starvation and forced labor,” according to French charity SOS Mediterranee.
In 2024, the EU signed a 7.4-billion-euro economic development deal with Cairo, in part to curb irregular migration.
But Kaldas said border controls miss the root cause: “People need to feel secure in their homes.”
Across Egypt, Khalil said migration has become “a widespread goal,” even among educated professionals.
“Those who can leave legally do so. Those who can’t are pushed into irregular migration, even if the journey carries extreme risks,” he told AFP.
’I’d do it again’
In Kafr Moustafa Effendi, families still mourn the dozens of young men who died or vanished in 2023 when a rusty fishing boat carrying 750 migrants capsized off Greece — one of the deadliest shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, now the subject of multiple court cases over alleged coast guard negligence.
Islam and El-Sayed, both 18 then, were aboard after their families scraped together 140,000 pounds each, their cousin Abdallah Ghanem told AFP.
“Back then, people caught minibuses to Libya as casually as if they were traveling to another town in Egypt.”
Despite the grief, the hopeful cling to success stories.
Construction worker Hassan Darwish left Sharqiya in 2023, believing he had “no future” in Egypt.
Now 24 and living in Rome, he says he earns about $700 monthly while awaiting asylum.
“I saw horrors,” he told AFP by phone. “But I’d do it again.”
He now supports his mother and sick brother, which “would never have been possible in Egypt.”
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