Egypt Cancels Jared Kushner Meeting After Aid Denial
Jared Kushner returned from his holiday vacation at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and has jetted off for the Middle East for a meeting with the Egyptian government, but yesterday the Egyptian foreign minister decided to cancel his one-on-one meeting with the presidential advisor after an aid package to the country was denied.
The Dover Daily News says that there will be other meetings between the U.S. delegation led by Kushner and Egyptian politician, but that the scheduled conference between Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Kushner will not happen after $95.7 million in aid was denied to Egypt.
Two U.S. sources reported that just before the visit, the Trump administration made the decision to deny the aid to the Middle Eastern country because of its lack of improvement in “human rights norms.”
But the foreign ministry sees this as an ill-advised decision by the Trump administration, and in response, canceled the meeting with the husband of Ivanka Trump.
“Egypt sees this measure as reflecting poor judgment of the strategic relationship that ties the two countries over long decades and as adopting a view that lacks an accurate understanding of the importance of supporting Egypt’s stability.”
Jared Kushner lacks security clearance level to review some of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence in White House role. And yet he’s still in charge of Trump’s Middle Eastern peace plan.https://t.co/ijlPBVvDhE
— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) January 2, 2019
The Jerusalem Post is reporting that now Shoukry’s office is saying that the meeting between the foreign minister and Kushner was never set in stone because the official “schedule was never fixed.”
But French President Emmanuel Macron has made it clear that if Kushner and Trump can’t make things happen in the Middle East, he and his team are ready to step in with their own plan, per the Inquisitr.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry Political Director Alon Ushpiz says that he thinks that Macron and the French are being provocative in order to get some level of peace plan moving.
“The elections in November are critical for Israel. A third of the members [of Congress] will be replaced and it’s not clear if they are all for us. We are starting from zero. We believe the Democrats will grow stronger and therefore there’s an effect on Israel due to their influence on Trump.”
The French embassy says that Macron is not trying to pressure anyone because Trump told the French president that he has ways to pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu.
“I gave Bibi [a nickname for the Israeli prime minister] a lot —I transferred the embassy to Jerusalem. You know, Emmanuel, I can be tough with Bibi.”
At this time, other meetings between the U.S. delegation and the Egyptians are still on the schedule.
