Obama Turns to a Former Diplomat to Deliver Bad News to Egypt's Mubarak
US President Barack Obama makes a statement on the situation in Egypt. Photographer: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz discusses the protests in Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak's regime and the impact on the rest of the world. Stiglitz speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak heard the U.S. message that it was time to go from a retired American diplomat, Frank Wisner, who has deep ties to Egypt’s political, military and economic sectors.
Wisner, 72, was U.S. ambassador to Egypt from 1986 to 1991 and has maintained ties to the country, people who know him said. He has served on the board of Cairo-based Commercial International Bank Egypt SAE, the country’s largest private- sector lender, since 2009.
Wisner met with Mubarak on Jan. 31, carrying Obama’s message that the Egyptian leader’s time in office was nearing an end, an administration official familiar with Wisner’s visit said yesterday.
Mubarak, beset by mass protests, announced yesterday that he wouldn’t run for another term and would allow elections and a transfer of power in the next few months. It would be the first change of regime in Egypt in three decades.
The thousands of people in Cairo’s main square roared following the television statement. Some reacted with anger to the president’s plan to remain in office until elections are held.
The turmoil has investors concerned about revolt spreading to other Arab countries and the impact on operation of the Suez Canal.
Leslie Gelb, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, described Wisner as “a super diplomat.”
“What he brings is decades of experience on how to handle the toughest situation and difficult people,” Gelb said in a telephone interview.
‘Unusual’ Contacts
During his tenure as the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Wisner established contacts with Egyptians outside the government, which is “unusual for an American ambassador,” Gelb said.
Wisner is familiar with all political players, including “the Muslim Brotherhood in all its dimensions,” Gelb said, and if he “wanted to see anyone, I’ve no doubt they would see him.” As an unofficial emissary, Wisner wouldn’t be bound by U.S. rules prohibiting contact with certain groups, Gelb said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said Jan. 31 that Wisner was in Cairo to “gain a perspective” on Mubarak’s thinking and “reinforce” Obama’s call for political and economic changes.
“Frank knows and understands the role of investment and development in Egypt,” Thomas Pickering, former U.S. undersecretary of State for political affairs, who preceded Wisner as U.S. ambassador to India from 1992 to 1993, said in a telephone interview.
Complex Assistance Program
During Wisner’s term as ambassador in Egypt, he “looked after one of the largest and most complex U.S. assistance programs,” Pickering said. The U.S. provides $1.5 billion of aid to Egypt annually, including military and economic grants.
The continued turmoil in Egypt may lead to a surge in bank withdrawals by customers, which “would be the biggest concern,” Robert McKinnon, chief investment officer at ASAS Capital in Dubai, said in a telephone interview on Jan. 30. Authorities are likely to keep the financial system closed to avert the risk, he said.
Wisner also has ties to some of the largest U.S. corporations, including a previous stint on the board of American International Group Inc. of New York. He served as a director from 1997 to 2003 and later held the position of vice chairman of external affairs until February 2009.
He continues to serve on the boards of Houston, Texas-based EOG Resources Inc., formerly Enron Oil & Gas Co., as well as Ethan Allen Interiors Inc., the Danbury, Connecticut-based furniture maker.
He is a foreign affairs adviser in New York for Washington- based Patton Boggs LLP.
Diplomatic Assignments
In his U.S. government roles, he has held diplomatic assignments in locales as varied as Algeria and Vietnam, according to his Patton Boggs profile. He served as the U.S. undersecretary of Defense for policy and the U.S. undersecretary of State for international security affairs.
In 2005, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice picked Wisner to be country’s special representative to the Kosovo Status Talks that led to the country’s independence from Serbia in 2008.
Wisner stayed involved in Egypt long after he left the U.S. embassy there, Pickering said.
Knows Mubarak Well
Wisner has “kept up with Egypt and knows Mubarak very well as well all the Egyptian players,” said Pickering, now vice chairman of Hills & Co., a consulting firm in Washington. He has a “very strong feel for what the street is interested in,” Pickering said.
Wisner also has known Omar Suleiman, the newly appointed vice president, who previously has served as the country’s intelligence chief, Pickering said.
In September 2005, after Mubarak won his fifth six-year term in the first multi-candidate election, Wisner called it a “major development” in Egypt in an interview published by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Egypt’s government “wants to, as was decided by Mubarak, move Egypt down the road to democratic reform, democratic inclusion,” Wisner said in the interview, posted on the website of the nonpartisan New York think tank. “But like everything that has typified his presidency, he’ll be very careful about it.”
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