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Friday's global agenda: Clinton prepares to meet with Egyptian president
Your morning global affairs speed-read
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to Egypt this weekend to meet with President Mohammed Morsi in what some observers see as a last-ditch effort to salvage the decades-long relationship between the two countries. Clinton will be the highest-level U.S. official to have met with the Muslim Brotherhood member, who is expected to meet with President Obama on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Clinton is expected to press Morsi on the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, the backbone of U.S. support for the country. Already, 35 Republican lawmakers have written to House leaders urging them to withhold all U.S. aid to the Egyptian government until its new Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president agrees to abide by “Egypt’s treaties, promote peace with Israel and continue to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” the conservative Washington Free Beacon reports.
Following her trip to Egypt, Clinton will travel to Israel on the heels of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Dialogue, her first visit there in two years. The trip is seen as being as much about domestic U.S. politics prior to the November elections as about foreign policy.
Warm relations: Alfonso Silva, the director general of Chile's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, meets with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson at the State Department today for this year’s session of the U.S.-Chile Bilateral Political Consultations. The consultations focus on bilateral and regional issues, including civilian security challenges in Central America and Haiti, President Obama’s educational exchange initiative 100,000 Strong in the Americas, and promotion of travel and tourism.
In other news:
Syria has allegedly begun moving its vast arsenal of chemical weapons out of storage facilities, worrying Washington. [The Wall Street Journal]
U.S. lawmakers this week began crafting new, tougher sanctions on Iran. [The Washington Post]
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) failed to reach agreement on a U.S.-backed code of conduct for the South China Sea, where China's ambitions are creating regional frictions. [Al Jazeera]
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