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Secretary of State John Kerry had hoped to offer considerably more aid to Egypt than the $250 million he announced during his trip to Cairo but was blocked by Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said.

“This is not the aid package that the administration wanted to announce,” Royce told The Hill. The administration wanted to release a “larger sum,” but bowed to the wishes of Royce’s committee as well as congressional appropriators, he said.Royce wouldn’t say how much Kerry had hoped to announce, but the State Department has been pressing Congress to greenlight $450 million in direct aid since last fall.

“Our approach is not the full-throttle administration approach of delivering all the aid that they wanted to deliver, but rather a measured approach of tying tranches to results as it pertains to the peace treaty with Israel, to cooperation with respect to smuggling [into Gaza] and with respect to economic reforms to guarantee civil rights and the rule of law within Egypt,” he said. “That’s the pressure that we’re applying.”

Kerry announced the new aid package last Sunday during a stop in Cairo as part of his first trip overseas. The money includes $190 million in budgetary support that’s part of the $1 billion in debt relief President Obama pledged in 2011, along with $60 million for an enterprise fund.

The aid, Kerry said, was a “good-faith effort to spur reform and help the Egyptian people at this difficult time.”

The $190 million comes from the $450 million cash transfer the administration proposed last year to give to Egypt to shore up an economy hammered by the Arab Spring. That money would be culled from funds left over from past Egypt appropriations going back to 2006 (the country gets $1.3 billion in military aid and another $250 million in economic aid every year under the terms of the 1978 Camp David accords leading to peace with Israel).

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, during his first trip to Egypt in the role, said yesterday that the U.S. government will release $250 million of a pledged $1 billion in aid to the country in response to commitments by President Mohamed Mursi to make economic and political changes.

The announcement followed a meeting in Cairo yesterday with Mursi and is part of “a good-faith effort to spur reform and help the Egyptian people at this difficult time,” Kerry said in a statement.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s 24-hour visit was meant to help Egypt break out of political and economic paralysis as it heads toward April elections that the secular opposition plans to boycott. Photographer: Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty Images

Kerry’s 24-hour visit was meant to help Egypt break out of political and economic paralysis as it heads toward April elections that the secular opposition plans to boycott. The standoff has complicated Egypt’s attempts to enact changes required for a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan.

Kerry urged Egyptians to hold transparent elections and respect rights and freedoms, particularly of women and religious minorities.

“Over the past couple of days in Egypt, I have listened to a broad cross-section of political leaders, business leaders and representatives of non-governmental organizations,” Kerry said. “The people I met shared their deep concern about the political course of their country, the need to strengthen human rights protections, justice and the rule of law, and their fundamental anxiety about the economic future of Egypt,” he said.

Egyptian Exports

Kerry also announced a decision to expand a program that allows Egyptian companies to export products from qualifying zones to the U.S. tariff-free. The zones are mostly along the border with Israel and the goods must include 10 percent Israeli content, said a U.S. official traveling with Kerry who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said that in Kerry’s talks, business leaders, NGOs and government officials all recognized that Egypt’s political crisis, its economic woes, and the challenge of qualifying for the IMF loan were linked.

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