Egypt seems to be winning its… war against radical Islamic groups.
I keep telling our friends in America that these terrorist groups are an international phenomenon. They are not a problem for Egypt alone. Terrorism is spreading everywhere. Look what happened at the World Trade Center, or in Oklahoma, or in Japan.
The illegal Muslim Brothers and the so-called Islamic Groups are all the same. They say they are moderates. There are no moderates.
Since the 1970s there was some kind of dialogue. It continued to some extent until 1992 in hopes that these people could be persuaded to give up violence. But then [militants] came back from Afghanistan and started using machine guns and filing people here.
When they killed the speaker of the Parliament and a famous writer, and started to attack tourists-just anybody on the street-we said, “No. Enough.”
Look, you say if these people came to power. I think they will never come to power. That’s for sure.
Look, we understand this area very well. Your media said that the Americans were “advising Egypt with their dialogue.” Never. And whoever says to me, “Dialogue,” I tell him, “No. Go have a dialogue in your own country. We know our people, and how to deal with them.”
Our economy is improving. And privatization is going very well. Maybe sometimes it slows down, because we have the problem of the workers. They could burn things up …. You cannot imagine the situation in this country when I took over.
It’s very strange. These were not true stories at all. They were stories I’d never heard, that never happened. I was very upset. The whole story that my sons were agents for Airbus, for instance? Never. It came from the groups of the Muslim Brothers.
We don’t expect that aid will continue forever. We know it can be reduced, maybe this year, maybe next. But whenever there is a reduction, it should be on an equal basis, If our assistance goes down, so should assistance to Israel. This is important for public opinion here.
We are very good friends. But we may differ in some areas.
