Analyst: US, Egypt military retain close links

“It’s really not surprising that Secretary of State Clinton would make such complimentary statements in regard to the Egyptian military,” Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire blogspot, said in an interview with Press TV on Sunday.

He added that the US administration has, “for over the last 30-plus years, been very supportive of the Egyptian military” as Washington provides the Egyptian Armed Forces with over USD one billion in military aid annually.

Clinton was on a two-day-long visit to the North African country over Saturday and Sunday and met with senior Egyptian officials, including President Mohamed Morsi and Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi, the head of the SCAF.

A US State Department official said that Clinton had praised the SCAF “for representing the Egyptian people in the revolution” -- which toppled former dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. The comments disregarded the military’s acts of brutality against the protesters following the revolution’s victory, namely the forces’ killing 10 Egyptian activists in December 2011.

Hundreds of Egyptians held a demonstration in Cairo on Saturday to protest the visit.

The demonstrators said that they were opposed to the US efforts to control and potentially divide Egypt.

Washington, which invariably supported Mubarak’s regime for over three decades, now claims to be advocating the country's transition to democracy.

Azikiwe noted that the US government intended to preserve “close linkage, particularly among the [Egyptian] Armed Forces and Armed Forces of the United States government,” in a bid to secure the implementation of Camp David Accords.

The accords were signed at Camp David in Washington, DC on September 17, 1978 by the then-Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and the then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin following 13 days of secret negotiations.

By inking the deal, Egypt became the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel, despite Tel Aviv's previous large-scale wars against Arab states, which had been followed by its occupation of vast expanses of Arab territories.