DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: DEMOCRATS MEET WITH THE MOSLEM BROTHERHOOD

Egypt criticizes U.S. after congressional delegation meets with Muslim Brotherhood lawmaker

CAIRO, Egypt: Egypt criticized a meeting Sunday that included four U.S. members of Congress and the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's bloc in Parliament, accusing the U.S. of having double standards for meeting with the banned Egyptian group but refusing to meet with the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

The congressional delegation, headed by North Carolina Democrat David Price, held talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak early Sunday before heading to Parliament to meet a group of lawmakers that included the Brotherhood's Mohammed Saad el-Katatni.

"The United States says that it doesn't establish relations with a banned group, whether in Egypt or outside Egypt," said Mubarak's spokesman Suleiman Awaad. "The U.S. says it is meeting with the Brotherhood as Parliament members, but doesn't make the same distinction and refuses to talk with Hamas, who is heading the Palestinian government and is occupying the prime minister's seat."

Neither the U.S. Embassy in Cairo nor the congressional delegation were immediately available for comment.

Hamas won a majority in the 2006 legislative elections in the Palestinian territories, but the U.S. has refused to meet directly with the group because Washington considers it a terrorist organization.

Hamas is loosely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and some of the militant group's founding members were part of the organization in Egypt and Jordan. However, the Brotherhood, once notorious for assassinations and militant activity, renounced violence in the 1970s. Hamas continues to advocate violence as part of its resistance against Israeli occupation.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the foreign minister in the Republican administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, has refused in the past to meet with the Brotherhood, and Price's delegation was not sent by the White House.

The delegation's meeting came less than two months after U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who ranks second in the House of Representatives, met with el-Katatni twice — once at Parliament and then at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt.

After Hoyer's meetings, U.S. Embassy spokesman John Berry said U.S. government policy does not bar meetings with the Brotherhood's members of Parliament and the talks were not a change in U.S. policy toward the group.

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