Political Quotes

“I wish to add my gratitude and recognition of Ambassador Patterson and her whole team--the State Department team on the ground. They did a very good job making the case to the Egyptian Government. But we have to all realize Egypt is in transition. They have just had their elections for the lower house, the Parliament. The upper house has not been seated yet, and they have not elected a President. They have gone from a dictatorship to an emerging democracy, and this case comes along, the NGO prosecutions. I think both of us--our entire delegation--think this is offensive. The IRI, the NDI are Republican-Democratic organizations funded by the government and the private sector that try to help emerging democracies all over the world. They have been in every country hotspot you can name--after the collapse of the Soviet Union--doing great work. So the accusations were the people involved in these organizations--and Senator McCain is the head of IRI--were involved in spying and espionage, and I wanted to take the floor to say I found the accusations offensive and without merit. The Egyptian coworkers, Egyptian citizens who were working with the IRI and NDI, are still in custody in Egypt, facing criminal prosecutions for helping these fine organizations, and we will not take our eye off of that and we will keep pushing to make sure we get the right answer. But how did this end? We know how it started.…”