Egyptian Economic Growth Essential to U.S.-Middle East Relations, Sununu says
WASHINGTON—New Hampshire Sen. John Sununu said Thursday that the United States must strengthen its trade and investment policies with Egypt so the country can reinforce its position as an economic leader in the Middle East and help confront current crises in the region.
Sununu—who spoke at a conference on Egyptian-American relations sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine—said Egypt has vast economic potential that can be exploited in the near future if the country works to maintain its leadership position in the region and move beyond the status quo.
Stabilizing the Middle East by removing the threat Iraq poses to neighboring countries is also essential to Egypt’s economic growth, Sununu—the Senate’s only Arab-American member—said. The stabilization of the region’s political and economic environment would instill confidence and certainty in potential foreign investors, including those from the United States, he added.
“I think the long-term goal of the [Bush] administration is to create greater stability by eliminating the political and military pressures that are created by a country that—at least in the past decade—has been willing to invade neighbors and develop weapons of mass destruction,” Sununu said.
Certain other fundamentals need to be in place, however, before foreign investment can increase in Egypt, Sununu said.
“I believe very strongly that the fundamental drivers of a long-term pattern of economic growth begin with a respect for private property rights and a clear system for titling those property rights,” Sununu said, citing systems that are currently weak in Egypt. It is imperative that these systems aren’t tainted by institutional corruption, he added.
Calling Sununu’s statements “right on target,” James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, said Egypt is the United States’s most strategic asset in the Middle East. Egypt is the largest Arab nation, sits at the pivot of three continents—Africa, Europe and Asia—and controls access to the Suez Canal, Zogby said, making its political and economic stability essential to the stability of the region.
“You simply could not imagine the Middle East without a stable Egypt sitting at the pivot working as an American ally,” Zogby said. “If Egypt were to suffer instability, not only would the Arab world but Northern Africa as well would become destabilized, the Eastern Mediterranean . . . would be destabilized and Southern Europe would also pay the consequences.”
Zogby said, however, that launching a war with Iraq is not the right way to rid the region of political turmoil and would only augment existing hostility toward Western investors.
“I think a containment policy is far more in the interest of that region than a destabilizing war which would not only dramatically affect . . . the price of oil but would make the region much less hospitable to American businesses than it currently is,” Zogby said
Published in The Manchester Union Leader, in New Hampshire.
