COUNTRY RECEIVES LOANS, GRANTS
By Bob Van Leer

  (CAIRO, EGYPT, March 19, 1989) - Our key meeting today was with Frank G. Wisner, a career foreign service officer and the U. S. ambassador to Egypt for nearly three years.

  Wisner said that the economy of Egypt is moving and the pace accelerating. But he said, "More needs to be done to give this country some hope". Egypt is a nation of 55-58 million people today, Wisner said, and will be over 70 million in the year 2000. The Egyptians live on just four percent of the country, along the Nile and its delta. He said a great deal of the economy is ''off the books'', perhaps 30- 50 percent. 

  Wisner predicted that Egypt will be the "hot spot'' for tourism in the 1990s. He encourages tourists to come to Egypt and said it is a pleasant place to live and there is no reason to be afraid.

  Wisner said that, after the 1973 war with Israel, the late president Anwar Sadat decided that Egypt needed to get its own house in order. The principal partners are Western nations with the U. S. as Number 1.

  The Camp David agreements were a U. S. backed initiative for peace, between Egypt and Israel.
Lessened Tensions

  Wisner said that for Egypt, the peace lessened tensions and the country can see that negotiated efforts can show achievements.
In fiscal 1989 the U.S. is financing Egypt with $2.12 billion dollars in the form of loans and grants, mostly grants.

   In the past six years our financing to Egypt has totaled over $11 billion, second only to Israel. In 1984, much of this was in the form of loans for military purposes but since then has been in the form of grants.

  Problems are developing in this relationship. The U. S. is now withholding $230 million in aid funds. The U. S. wants economic austerity measures instituted before putting up the $230 million.

  This has struck a raw nerve in people who feel they were promised parity with Israel after the Camp David accord but have never gotten it, Wisner, himself, said that Egypt would have to be careful in instituting any austerity measures to avoid a backlash. But, he said, if there is not enough economic reform now, in the end there will be a worse explosion.

  In the afternoon we were taken to the Egyptian Museum which houses a collection of priceless art from a civilization with a recorded history of 5000 years. Paintings thousands of years old still display brilliant colors. The upper floor of the museum is devoted entirely to an incredible array of artifacts from the tomb of King Tut. Part of this was on tour in the U. S. a couple of years ago.

   The star of the collection is a gold death mask of the king, who was only 18 when he died. Inside his tomb was a box covered with gold sheets about the size of a truck shipping container. Inside this was a similar gold-covered box and inside this still another and then another, four boxes in all. And inside the last box was a coffin within several coffins.

  The final coffin is solid gold and weighs 110 kilograms (a kilogram is 2.2 pounds).

Mohammed Ali Mosque

  After the museum we were taken to the Mohammed Ali Mosque, a recent building compared with the museum artifacts, built in 1856. It is of Turkish style, built when the Ottoman Turks ruled Egypt by the same architect that built the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The mosque is inside the Citadel, a fort built in 1176 as a protection against the Crusaders.

  In the evening we dined at the hotel with Galal El Rashidi, minister, counselor and director of the Egyptian press and information bureau at the United Nations in New York. He also showed great concern about the threatened aid cutoff saying the amount is a small part of the total package but is symbolic to the Egyptian people.

  Our schedule tomorrow is military. First a meeting with Major General A. E1 Tawil, Armament Authority, Ministry of Defense, then a visit to a military factory. This is to be followed with a late lunch at the El Galaa Officers Club, hosted by the Ministry of Defense.