White House officials call to cut U.S. aid to Egypt, Labeled coup

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[url]http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/08/19356446-white-house-rebuffs-calls-to-cut-us-aid-to-egypt-ducks-coup-label?lite[/url]

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White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration believes “it would not be in the best interest of the United States to immediately change our assistance programs to Egypt” in the wake of last week’s overthrow of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.
Carney’s Monday comments were a direct rebuff to calls from some members of Congress for a cutoff or interruption in the $1.5 billion in annual U.S. aid to the troubled nation.
Carney avoided labeling last week’s overthrow of then-President Mohammad Morsi a “coup” – with the administration sidestepping for now a decision about whether to comply with a section of the Foreign Assistance Act requiring that non-humanitarian aid to a country be stopped after a democratically elected head of government is forced out by a coup.

“This is an incredibly complex and difficult situation,” Carney told reporters when asked whether a coup had taken place last week in Cairo.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday, “I don’t want to be analyzing what the legal options are here. That is being closely looked at; there are a number of factors that are being closely looked at” as administration lawyers study whether a coup had in fact occurred.

She added, “There are millions of people on the ground (in Egypt) who do not think it was a coup.”

[IMG]http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/imagecache/page_masthead/the_white_house_0.jpg?itok=Ihf1hmss[/IMG]

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