By Edmund Blair
CAIRO (Reuters) – Ex-foreign minister
Amr Moussa, a leading contender for Egypt’s presidency, said on Sunday he would give the military a voice in key policies
via a national security council, a move to reassure ruling generals about their status after a power
transfer.
former Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa speaks during a news conference in Cairo April 22, 2012. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd
El Ghany
Moussa, a self-described liberal nationalist whose main election rivals are
Islamists, also said Egypt needed a president with lobbying skills to work effectively with the Islamist-dominated parliament
and other institutions after decades of autocratic government.
Egypt’s presidential vote that starts on May 23-24
will mark the final stage of a transition to civilian rule from generals who took charge after Hosni Mubarak was ousted last
year.
But analysts say the military, from whose ranks Mubarak and all other presidents have been drawn for the past
six decades, will seek influence from behind the scenes for years to come, particularly over security and foreign policy in a
country that in 1979 became the first Arab state to make peace with Israel.
Moussa, 75, said the national security
council, to be chaired by the president, would include senior cabinet ministers plus top military officers. It would have a
broad national security brief, he told a news conference.
“It has to consider all issues pertaining to national
security and not only issues of defence or war, etc, but issues like water, issues like relations with neighbours,” said
Moussa, a former head of the Arab League.
“(The council) will be a power house on those issues of major priority for
the national life,” he added.
Other candidates, including one Islamist, have made similar suggestions but Moussa’s
proposal and his plans as a whole are more detailed than most.
Analysts say that while liberals and Islamists alike
would like to curb the army’s political influence, any next president is likely to focus on more pressing economic issues
and avoid confrontation with the military over foreign policy.
The army has said it will hand over power and return to
barracks by July 1, leaving the new president in charge.
But various comments from army officials, usually in private,
or from the military-appointed cabinet have indicated that the military wants a longer term role in protecting broad
interests that range from businesses to national security, and wants to guide state affairs that could impact
them.
“We work with everyone for the sake of Egypt, which will not submit to any one person or particular group, but
will be for all Egyptians according to the popular will,” Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the military
council, told troops on Saturday, according to the official news agency.
Western diplomats say one of the army’s
worries is that a new civilian government could jeopardise the peace treaty with Israel, a deal that secures Egypt $1.3
billion in annual U.S. military aid and which was a cornerstone of Mubarak’s policy.
Moussa did not give specifics on
what he saw as the next president’s relations with the military, saying: “This is a time of crisis and this is not the issue
that we have to discuss.”
Egypt’s old constitution included a national defence council in a section on the armed
forces that was limited to the “safety and security” of Egypt. It did not list members.
Moussa said the next president
should “avoid confrontational policies” and needed to reach out to a broad range of players, unlike previous holders of the
office like Mubarak who ruled with rubber-stamp parliaments and ignored or jailed opponents.
“The president used to
say do this and it is done, now it is not the case, but we have to sit together, we have to agree on certain issues and I
believe the art of lobbying will have to be mastered from now on,” he said.
Moussa’s main rivals are the Muslim
Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi, moderate Islamist Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, and Mubarak’s last prime minister and an ex-air
force commander, Ahmed Shafiq.
Asked about his Islamist rivals, Moussa said: “I want to do something for Egypt coming
from all angles of thinking and of policymaking, not a certain one.”
He added that Egypt, after years of
mismanagement, “should not get into an experiment that has not been tried before.”
