March 16, 2011
Clinton: Egypt will keep the peace with Israel
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Egypt’s foreign policy will change, but it has an interest in sustaining its peace accords with Israel, Hillary Rodham Clinton said.
“I think there will be different decisions” on foreign policy, the U.S. secretary of state told NPR on Wednesday after she toured Egypt. It was Clinton’s first visit there since the revolution that ousted longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, who had maintained the Camp David accords with Israel.
“But I think that there is such an interest in keeping the peace in the region,” she continued. “Egypt has got a lot on its plate. It’s going to have to politically reform, economically reform. It’s got a big agenda ahead of it. I think the last thing it wants is to see any kind of problem between itself and its neighbors.”
Clinton said she expected Egypt to maintain controls keeping terrorists and guns from entering the Gaza Strip.
“I think there’s also an argument that Egypt’s got security interests in not permitting the import and export of arms and possible ingress and egress of terrorists,” she said. “So it’s not only what Egypt will or won’t do with respect to Israel, it’s what Egypt will decide is in its interest to do. And that will be up to the Egyptian government to determine.”
