News Release

* Delaying Withdrawal in Iraq? * Extending Repression in Egypt

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RAED JARRAR
Jarrar is the Iraq consultant for the American Friends Service Committee and a senior fellow with Peace Action. He is recently back from a visit to Iraq. Jarrar said today: “According to President Obama’s withdrawal plan, all combat forces must leave Iraq by the end of August. But this deadline is being challenged by the spike of violence in Iraq and by a drumbeat in Washington using that violence to justify prolonging the occupation.

“Iraq is broken, but the U.S. military occupation is not a part of the solution. The vast majority of Iraqis don’t think we can fix what the military occupation has damaged through prolonging it. If President Obama were to break his promises and delay the withdrawal, that will add another layer of complications to Iraq, and will harm his image and credibility in the U.S., Iraq, and the rest of the world.”

AIDA SEIFALDAWLA
Seifaldawla is program director of the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, which just released a statement with 12 other major Egyptian organizations: “The Egyptian government is often forced to recognize past abuses in the course of putting a pretty face on future ones, as aptly illustrated by a presidential decree issued on May 11 that extended the State of Emergency for another two years. This time, the prime minister and parliamentarians with the ruling party swore that the Emergency Law would only be applied in terrorism and drug cases, implicitly admitting that it has been applied much more broadly over the last 29 years, despite repeated denials by the government.” See the full statement: “Twenty-Nine Years of Lies … And Now Two More Years.”

GOUDA ABDEL KHALEK, via Mokhtar Kamel
Khalek is a professor at Cairo University. He is among the speakers at a symposium titled “The Future of Egypt as a Constitutional Democracy” taking place at the City University of New York on Saturday and co-organized by the Alliance of Egyptian Americans. Kamel is a member of the group and can arrange interviews with various speakers.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167