Posted on 04/07/2007 3:53:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CAIRO, Egypt - A top U.S. Democratic congressman met a leading member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed opposition group, during a recent visit to the country, the Islamic fundamentalist group and U.S. officials said Saturday.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (news, bio, voting record) met with the Muslim Brotherhood's parliament leader, Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, twice on Thursday — once at the parliament building and then at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, said Brotherhood spokesman Hamdi Hassan.
U.S. Embassy spokesman John Berry would only confirm that Hoyer, who represents Maryland, met with el-Katatni at U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone's home at a reception with other politicians and parliament members.
Though officially banned since 1954, the Brotherhood is tolerated by the government and has become Egypt's largest opposition group and President Hosni Mubarak's most powerful rival.
Its members, who run as independents, make up the largest opposition bloc in parliament, holding about one-fifth of its 454 seats.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has refused in the past to meet with the Muslim Brotherhood.
But Berry said U.S. government policy does not bar meetings with Brotherhood members of parliament and Hoyer's talks with el-Katatni were not a change in U.S. policy toward the group.
"It's our diplomatic practice around the world to meet with parliamentarians, be they members of political parties or independents," Berry said. "We haven't changed our policy with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization."
The State Department had no comment Saturday on Hoyer's meetings with the group.
Berry stressed that Hoyer met with el-Katatni in his capacity as an independent member of Egyptian parliament. He would not say what the two discussed.
Hassan said the two lawmakers discussed developments in the Middle East, the "Brotherhood's vision" and opposition movements in Egypt. He said the two met privately at the ambassador's home and with other members of Hoyer's bipartisan delegation and Egyptian lawmakers at the parliament building.
Hoyer's meeting came just a day after Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) drew sharp criticism from the Bush administration for meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus.
Pelosi and other Democrats argue the administration needs to engage Syria to resolve some of the most intractable problems in the Middle East, such as Iraq and the Israeli-Arab conflict. But the Bush administration rejects that approach, accusing Syria of exacerbating the troubles in neighboring Iraq and Lebanon.
Jon Alterman, a Mideast specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Bush administration officials may have avoided meeting Muslim Brotherhood members because that could strain relations with the secular Egyptian government, one of the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East.
"The difficulty when it gets to Egypt is that the Brotherhood is not a legal group within Egypt and the U.S. government is wary of violating laws in countries in which it operates," he told The Associated Press on Saturday.
"The larger constraint on our willingness to meet the Brotherhood is the Egyptian government's unease with our government's meeting with the Brotherhood."
Hoyer, who also met with Mubarak during his visit, left Egypt on Friday. A telephone message left with his spokeswoman Saturday was not immediately returned. Calls to el-Katatni also went unanswered Saturday.
The Muslim Brotherhood's parliament bloc Web site said the meetings were not part of an effort to engage the United States.
"The Brotherhood not only has reservations on dialogue with the Americans but rejects the unfair American policy in the region," the Web site said.
Washington has been pressing Mubarak for years to enact reforms as part of a Bush administration campaign to spread democracy in the Mideast. And Rice expressed concern in March that "all voices" were not being heard in deliberations over amending the constitution as part of those reforms.
"There's been a growing sense in Washington over 20 years that Islamic politics are here to stay, and the U.S. interest in promoting democracy around the world means we should be engaging with a growing number of actors," Alterman said.
___
Associated Press writers Anna Johnson in Cairo and John Heilprin in Washington contributed to this report.
Why the surprise? We’ve been asking for democracy in the mideast. The opposition might like us less than the dictators do.
OMG!! Well said! And there will be no repercussions, as usual.
Oh, dear person - thank you!
Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria. Pelosi shook the hands with "the president (Syria's Basher al-Assad) of one of the worst repressive, totalitarian regimes," the dissident Brotherhood said in a statement. Syria "still carries out political arrests and torture...and is responsible for the disappearance of thousands of dissidents as well as the forced exile of many others," a Brotherhood leader, Ali Sadr al-Din al-Bayanuni, said in the statement.
The Brotherhood is trying to overthrow Basher as well to install a Islamic theocracy.
To a Jihadist, Basher is just the opposite end of the spectrum, the dictator blocking their objectives to live under Sharia Law
It’s a constitutional separation of powers question.
Neither of these meetings , while perhaps not technically illegal considering the current state of affairs, are not to seemly anyway you view them, nonetheless, coupled with their’s and others overall reaching-out effort to the more suspect leaders on the Middle East also has a tremendous potential of use as propaganda and clearly circumvents the President in performing the duties and responsibility to handling the foreign affairs side of things...
I don’t particularly care for a “democracy” established that leaves a back door open for the dems to wander in and out whenever it is convenient for them on a first name basis, regardless the effect on our nation and allies or which party holds the WH.
Yes, back on the real topic: what matters to America and our interests. I agree on all points - Pelosi is a loose canon.
HA! The party of terrorists. The DNC never met a terrorist they didn’t like and think they could do business with.
From http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/52768.htm
Francis J. Ricciardone, Jr. was sworn in as Ambassador to the Arab Republic of Egypt on August 26, 2005. He was nominated by President Bush on July 25, 2005, and confirmed by the Senate on July 29, 2005. Ambassador Ricciardone previously served as Ambassador to the Republic of the Philippines and the Republic of Palau from 2002 to 2005. Prior to that, Ambassador Ricciardone served as Director of the Department’s Task Force on the Coalition Against Terrorism and as a Senior Advisor to the Director General of the Foreign Service. From March 1999 until early 2001, he served as the Secretary of State’s Special Coordinator for the Transition of Iraq.
Ambassador Ricciardone was born in Boston and graduated from Malden Catholic High School. Upon graduation summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1973, he received a Fulbright Scholarship for teaching and study in Italy. He went to Iran as a teacher in 1976, traveling widely in Southwest Asia, Europe, and the Middle East until he entered the Foreign Service in 1978.
Ambassador Ricciardone’s Foreign Service assignments include two tours in Turkey, most recently (1995-1999) as Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d’Affaires; and service in Cairo, Amman, and London. He served in two multinational military deployments: as chief of the Civilian Observer Unit of the Multinational Force and Observers in Egypt’s Sinai Desert, and as Political Advisor to the U.S. and Turkish commanding generals of Operation Provide Comfort, based in Turkey and operating in Iraq. In Washington, DC, Ambassador Ricciardone has served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, and in senior management positions under the Director General of the Foreign Service and of Human Resources. He has won high awards for policy and program management and for political reporting.
Mr. Ricciardone speaks Italian, Turkish, Arabic, and French. (End)
I dunno between maybe some bugs and maybe a full blown traitor. I hope to God it’s bugs.
That’s it. I can’t look at this stuff anymore. This is too much. Just send my Burka to my forwarding address. Adiós Pelosi borderbots.
LOL,,,Can’t Tango in a Burka *<(;0)
Mark
What long war thread? WOT? Iraq? Afghanistan? Something else? I feel like there’s something I should know here but missed? Or is this just a group for the “in” crowd, lol?
Cindie
Well why not? I mean, they are on the same side!
IIRC, Al Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s operations officer, was a high “muckety-muck” in the muslim brotherhood, before escaping from Egypt.
That would be the #2 man in Al Queda, Nan and Stenny!
Mark
Keep them dancin’ shoes ready...;0)
“Looks like the makings of some sort of alliance between
the DemonRAT Party and totalitarian Islamic crazies.”
I’ve thought there was an alliance for a long time.
I wonder if Ellison went along. The media has been completely silent on Keith Ellison’s participation. If anyone runs across anything, please ping me.
Give it some time. They seem to pick up on a lot that is said on our site, a lot of which will never reach the Lame Stream Media.
It's time for the AG to start earning his pay by going after these traitors.
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