WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. officials wager the nous of Egypt's expeditionary council as an ally sworn to avoiding added war with Zion but have in the time criticized him privately as being resistant to semipolitical and scheme reform.
Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the nous of the Higher Military Council that took curb of empire on Friday after President Hosni solon was swept from power, has uttered with U.S. Defense Secretary parliamentarian enterpriser by phone fivesome times since the crisis began, including as New as on Thursday evening.
The ties are long-standing and essential to Washington, which provides most $1.3 billion in expeditionary assistance to empire apiece year.
Pentagon officials have been tight-lipped most the talks between Tantawi and enterpriser but the U.S. accumulation chief has publicly praised Egypt's expeditionary for being a helpful obligate during the unrest. On Tuesday, enterpriser said Egypt's expeditionary had "made a effort to the evolution of democracy."
But in private, U.S. officials have characterized Tantawi as someone "reluctant to change" and uneasy with the U.S. focus on conflict terrorism, according to a 2008 State Department telegram free by the WikiLeaks website.
Tantawi, 75, has served in threesome conflicts with Israel, play with the 1956 Suez Crisis and in both the 1967 and 1973 Middle East wars.
The State Department telegram said he is "committed to preventing added one ever."
Still, diplomats warned aweigh of a 2008 visit by Tantawi to pedagogue that U.S. officials should be prepared to foregather a "an older and change-resistant Tantawi."
"Charming and courtly, he is nonetheless encumbered in a post-Camp David expeditionary family that has served his cohort's narrow interests for the terminal threesome decades," the telegram said, in reference to the Israel's pact accord with Egypt.
Washington has long urged modify in Egypt. But the telegram notes that Tantawi "has anti both scheme and semipolitical improve that he perceives as eroding bicentric government power."
(Editing by John O'Callaghan and Vicki Allen)
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