<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> WorldTribune.com: Mobile — Sharanksy: Bush used 'weight of the Oval Office' to back dissidents

Sharanksy: Bush used 'weight of the Oval Office' to back dissidents

Thursday, November 27, 2008 Free Headline Alerts

WASHINGTON — During his first months in office, President George Bush demanded that the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak release a leading pro-Western dissident.

"On more than one occasion, he put the weight of the Oval Office behind demands to release dissidents from prisons," former Israeli Cabinet minister Natan Sharansky said.

"In August 2001, for example, he [Bush] threatened to hold up a multi-billion-dollar aid package for Egypt if it would not agree to release imprisoned democracy advocate Saad Eddin Ibrahim."

Bush met on June 13, 2005, with North Korean defector, Kang Chol-Hwan, and worried publicly that the then-dovish South Korean government was not doing enough to call attention to the humanitarian plight of its brethren living in communist North Korea.

In a Nov. 25 column for the Los Angeles Times, Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident, said Bush had been prepared to press Arab and other countries to institute human rights and democracy. Egypt has been receiving about $1.7 billion in annual U.S. aid, about 75 percent of which was allocated for military assistance. "He routinely met with democratic dissidents in the Oval Office," Sharansky recalled. "Indeed, during his tenure, he openly met in different forums with more than 100 dissidents and discussed with them the situation in their countries."

The dissidents included those from Egypt. Sharansky cited Egyptian democracy activist Ayman Nour, who was eventually imprisoned by the Mubarak regime. After his release, Ibrahim fled to the United States to avoid Egyptian arrest.

Administration sources said Bush pressed Egypt to introduce democratic reforms in his first years in office. By 2004, the sources said, the president softened his approach when Washington sought Egypt's support for the U.S. war in Iraq.

Since 2005, the administration blocked several attempts by Congress to link U.S. military aid to Egypt to democratic reforms. In 2007, Congress approved legislation that linked $100 million of the $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Egyptian compliance of human rights and security cooperation with Israel. So far, the White House has blocked any attempt to cut U.S. military aid to Cairo.

In his column, Sharansky urged President-elect Barack Obama to continue Bush's policy of encouraging human rights and democracy in Egypt and other countries. Sharansky said Obama could be more successful than Bush in convincing dictatorships to ease represession.

"Obama finds himself in a much stronger position to lead than that enjoyed by his predecessor," Sharansky said. "He could use his wide popularity and his considerable influence over public opinion in America and across the globe to support democratic dissidents from all over the world."

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