UNITED STATES
Confronted with the most acute foreign policy crisis of his administration, President Barack Obama is increasingly relying on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her advice and connections — including a 20-year friendship with the family of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that has drawn fire from human rights advocates.It was Clinton who came up with the idea of sending Frank Wisner, U.S. ambassador to Egypt in the 1980’s, to Cairo to deliver Obama’s pointed request that Mubarak not seek a new term as the country’s leader, an administration official told POLITICO.
And it was Clinton who Obama dispatched to appear on five Sunday morning shows to send a not-so-subtle message to the tottering dictator that the time had come for a “peaceful transition to real democracy,” not Mubarak’s “faux democracy.”
As a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, Clinton aired the famous “3 a.m.” commercial, with its image of a White House phone ringing with news of an international crisis, to question Obama’s foreign policy experience. But in the past week, Clinton has been at the center of Obama’s frantic attempt to keep pace with spiraling events — including a critical meeting in the Oval Office last Saturday when Obama deputized Clinton to clarify the administration’s confused response to the crisis.
Just as importantly, she also is providing valuable insights into Mubarak’s behavior, according to officials. Those insights are honed from years of contact with the 82-year-old Egyptian leader and his much younger wife, a relationship that deepened during Clinton’s 1999 trip to Egypt with her daughter Chelsea.
“Hillary knows Mubarak is a dictator, and they aren’t close friends,” says a former top U.S. diplomat with ties to Obama. “But she knows him well enough — well enough to know this guy isn’t Saddam Hussein, and he’s probably the one who told the army not to fire into the crowd.”
Clinton is even closer to Suzanne Mubarak, supporting her human rights work, including initiatives geared at reducing youth unemployment and campaigns to stop human trafficking and the sexual mutilation of women.
“Mubarak needs to be shown a path out of this, and Hillary’s trying to find a way to do that,” added the official, who says Clinton also is sharing her experience with other Mideast leaders who may be facing similar upheaval. “She knows a lot of these people on a personal level.”
It’s not clear whether Clinton has reached out to either of the Mubaraks since the protests began last month, although she has been working the phones, according to aides.
But proximity has its perils. In a 2009 interview with Al Arabiya television, Clinton defended the relationship with the Egyptian president and his wife when asked about human rights abuses by the Mubarak regime, saying, “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.”
That led to a Washington Post editorial, questioning her ability to challenge autocratic regimes — and raised questions about Clinton’s repeated claim that the administration has long pressured Mubarak to enact much needed democratic and economic reform.
Activists are pressuring the administration to move even more quickly – and publicly acknowledge the pitfalls of helping to prop up corrupt regimes.
“To pretend that 30 years of repression haven’t occurred … It’s dishonest and dishonorable,” says Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit that has long criticized Mubarak’s detention and abuse of political prisoners.
Without mentioning Clinton by name, he added: “Those who have gotten used to Egypt as it was will have a harder time making the transition than newer folks who may be able to make an easier transition to what Egypt will be.”
But before that happens, Mubarak must go — a fact that Obama and his team, reluctant to let go of a stable ally, have been reluctant to embrace.
White House and State Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have made it clear that Mubarak’s days are numbered. Wisner, for his part, is still in Cairo hoping to make that case to Mubarak again, according to published accounts.
In the meantime, Obama and Clinton are essentially spectators, watching Mubarak’s Tuesday night speech to his country in the White House Situation Room Tuesday, according to aides.
The frustration is not new. Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks last year portray Clinton attempting to walk the same tightrope as Obama, who softened the hard line on human rights adopted by President George W. Bush, in favor of a “soft power” attempt to convince Mubarak to voluntarily adopt democratic reforms.
In her first meeting with Mubarak as secretary, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey asked Clinton to refrain from even praising Mubarak’s recent release of a political prisoner — for fear of souring the relationship from the start, according to the leaked cables.
It’s not clear what Clinton said to Mubarak in their private sit-down but the secretary did discuss human rights — and emerged from the meeting to tell reporters she hoped her advice “will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered, that we all have room for improvement.”
She was far more forceful in interviews last weekend, telling NBC, “We want to see free and fair elections, and we expect that will be one of the outcomes of what is going on in Egypt right now.”
Obama, known for relying on a tight circle of foreign policy advisers based in the West Wing and Vice President Joe Biden’s office, has turned to Clinton in the past for advice and to serve as the public face for the administration’s policies.
But Clinton, who entered Foggy Bottom without the policy agenda of many of her predecessors, has never occupied such a central role in such an unpredictable situation. That’s because the administration has never faced a foreign crisis of this magnitude that requires “all hands on deck,” according to a senior administration official.
But it’s also because the pragmatic Clinton is “one of the few remaining grown-ups,” in the words of one former State Department higher-up, who can speak authoritatively at a time of rapid staff turnover in the West Wing.
“She’s the obvious choice to adopt this role,” says Daniel Kurtzer who served as ambassador to Egypt under Bill Clinton and as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Israel.
“You need someone out there who understands the complexity of this situation,” adds Kurtzer. “And she’s one of the only people who could step in. She knows all of these players very well, and that’s critical at a time when the administration is presented with so few good alternatives.” POLITICO by Glenn Thrush
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