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Us envoys business link to Egypt

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Obama scrambles to limit damage after Frank Wisner makes robust call for Mubarak to remain in place as leader

By Robert Fisk in Cairo

(source: Independent UK)

Frank Wisner, President Barack Obama’s envoy to Cairo who infuriated the White House this weekend by urging Hosni Mubarak to remain President of Egypt, works for a New York and Washington law firm which works for the dictator’s own Egyptian government.

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Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year “career” diplomat ?

in otherwords, he was not a political appointee

 

Mr Wisner’s astonishing remarks – “President Mubarak’s continued leadership is critical: it’s his opportunity to write his own legacy” – shocked the democratic opposition in Egypt and called into question Mr Obama’s judgement, as well as that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a “personal capacity”. But there is nothing “personal” about Mr Wisner’s connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises “the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government’s behalf in Europe and the US”. Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials – nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.

Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under eight American presidents. In other words, he was not a political appointee. But it is inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his employment by a company that works for the very dictator which Mr Wisner now defends in the face of a massive democratic opposition in Egypt.

So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner’s current employers?

 

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George w bush calls off Europe visit after arrest threat over torture of terror suspects

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(source: The Australian)

He was once mocked for his scant foreign travel. Now George W. Bush faces the prospect of a retirement confined to the United States after the cancellation of a trip to Switzerland amid fear of being prosecuted for torture. The former president’s first trip to Europe since leaving office was called off after human rights groups lodged a complaint with the Swiss courts urging that he be prosecuted under international laws forbidding torture.

Mr Bush had been due to speak in Geneva on February 12 at a dinner for the pro-Israeli United Israel appeal. A lawyer for that organisation told Swiss media that the event had been cancelled because of the risk of violence at planned protests against Mr Bush.

But human rights groups, including the London-based Amnesty International and the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, claimed a victory in their battle to have Mr Bush prosecuted for his role in ordering terror suspects to be tortured. The groups filed their complaint with the Swiss courts on Friday, accusing Mr Bush of torture based on the frank admission in his recent memoir, Decision Points, that he personally gave the go-ahead to the waterboarding of terror suspects held in CIA custody.

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Erekat qatar holds investments in settlements

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(source: Ma’an News Agency)

Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat threatened Monday to expose official documents about investments he said proved that Qatar holds in companies that operate in illegal Israeli West Bank settlements.  More than 24% of the biggest Israeli companies in the Qarne Shomron settlement, located in the northern West Bank district of Qalqiliya, rely on Qatari investments worth millions of US dollars, said Erekat. “The time will come in future to reveal these documents,” he threatened.

The statement was the latest in a series of accusations targeting the Emir of Qatar Shaykh Hamadi bin Khalifa Ath-Thani, who was singled out for attacks in the wake of a series of aired documentaries on Al-Jazeera, which publicized in Arabic highlights from a set of 1,600 leaked documents from over 10 years of talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials.

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