Egyptian Google exec urges investments for Egypt

WASHINGTON—The Google Inc. executive who helped spark the Egyptian revolt invited Americans to visit Egypt and urged the world Friday to invest there to ensure the country’s economic success.

Wael Ghonim said in an interview with CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” that countries and corporations can help turn Egypt around. Failure to do so would send the wrong message to dictators around the world, he said.

“There are definitely risks in investments in Egypt, but the world has to realize that this should not go wrong,” said Ghonim, who anonymously launched a Facebook page that helped organize the protests that led to the ouster of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “The Egyptian revolution should not go wrong.”

Ghonim, who was in Washington for global finance talks and meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, also said that tourists are returning to Egypt but that the country still could use more.

“I personally saw tourists last week in Tahrir walking around … in the square. It’s such an amazing spirit,” Ghonim said, talking about the big square in Cairo that was at the center of the protests. “I would say to the American citizens, ‘Come and visit us and see the new spirit of the … Egyptian people.'”

His comments came as the world’s major economies pledged to provide support for the regime changes that are occurring in the Middle East and North Africa. The discussions occurred at the start of three days of finance talks designed to deal with challenges facing the global economy.

“If the economy is stabilized, everything else will stabilize, and the politics will go in the right direction,” Ghonim said.

Earlier Friday, Ghonim took the International Monetary Fund and the international community to task for not countering the economic and social injustices in the region, speaking during a roundtable discussion on youth, jobs and growth in the Middle East and North Africa.

“A lot of people criticized me for coming here. The perception being that the IMF was part of the problem, it made all those regimes survive, it put countries into debt,” Ghonim told the panel, which included IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

“I think the world now got sort of a wakeup call from what the people have done and the people who lost their lives to send that call,” he added. “We want to see change in policies; we want to see real change in policies and a completely different way of viewing and dealing with dictators.”

Ghonim, an Egyptian who oversees Google’s marketing in the Middle East and Africa, went missing Jan. 27, two days after protests calling for Mubarak’s ouster began.

One of the main tools for organizing the rallies was a Facebook page in honor of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old businessman who died in June at the hands of undercover police, a hated institution for many Egyptians.

Ghonim said he was snatched off the street and spent much of his detention blindfolded. Upon his release, he confirmed reports that he was the administrator of the Facebook page.

He has been named to receive a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in Boston on May 23.