The Obama Administration decided on taking office to speak up less publicly about human rights in Egypt, but to continue to press the government of President Hosni Mubarak in private to do more to improve its poor record.
The release of the cables last Friday came as major anti-government protests grew in Egypt.
The cables show Egypt’s human rights and democracy record remained a constant sticking point in relations between Washington and Cairo. In one cable, a US diplomat reported that despite repeated pressure overall progress in democratic reform remained slow, and Egypt continued to be suspicious of US interventions on human rights.
Before Mubarak’s first visit to the Obama White House in 2009, US Ambassador Margaret Scobey recommended Secretary of State Hillary Clinton take a more private and less confrontational approach in pressuring Mubarak. She said he is a “tried and true realist, innately cautious and conservative, and has little time for idealistic goals.”
She said President George W. Bush’s public “name and shame” approach had alienated Egypt.
“Mubarak viewed President Bush as naive, controlled by subordinates, and totally unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq, especially the rise of Iran’s regional influence,” the ambassador said.
The New York Times quoted a cable prepared for a visit by Gen. David H. Petraeus in 2009 describing how the US, while blunt in private, now avoided “the public confrontations that had become routine over the past several years.
Egyptian democracy and human rights efforts “are being stymied,” and the regime is highly skeptical of Washington’s role in promoting democracy, Scobey wrote in March 2009. Egypt also complained that any effort to open up will result in empowering the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s biggest opposition group, Scobey reported.
Several cables said US diplomats repeatedly pressed Egyptian officials with limited success about widespread police brutality against criminals and demonstrators and the jailing of dissidents and bloggers. Others showed that diplomats kept a close watch on reports of torture by police.