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Hoyer Meets Official From Egypt’s Banned Muslim Brotherhood

Saturday, April 07, 2007

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 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 had 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 PARLIMENT 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 “BROTHERHOODs 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 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.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,264805,00.html#ixzz1Cwdz4huG

April 12, 2007

Pelosi’s delegation to Syria—who said what to whom?

Did Rep. NANCY PELOSI drop the ball in the Middle East? Was she fouled? Was there a ball at all?

Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, earned White House vituperation — unusual for its intensity in even these partisan times — after delivering what she said was a PEACE MESSAGE last week from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud OLMERT TO Syrian President Bashar ASSAD.

“It was a nonstatement, nonsensical statement and didn’t make any sense at all that she would suggest that those talks could go forward as long as the Syrians conducted themselves as a prime state sponsor of terror,” Vice President DICK CHENEY told radio host Rush Limbaugh. “I think it is, in fact, bad behavior on her part. I wish she hadn’t done it.”

Some Pelosi statements on Assad prompted an almost immediate “clarification” from Olmert’s office.

“We were very pleased with the reassurances we received from the president that he was ready to resume the peace process,” Pelosi had said. “He was ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel.

Also, the “meeting with the president enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks as well.”

But in his meeting with Pelosi, Olmert’s statement said, the prime minister “emphasized that although Israel is interested in peace with Syria, that country continues to be part of the axis of evil and a force that encourages terror in the entire Middle East. In order to conduct serious and genuine peace negotiations, Syria must cease its support of terror, cease its sponsoring of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, refrain from providing weapons to Hezbollah and bringing about the destabilizing of Lebanon, cease its support of terror in Iraq, and relinquish the strategic ties it is building with the extremist regime in Iran.”

The clarification baffled the delegation, which included Rep. TOM LANTOS (San Mateo), the Jewish chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. HENRY WAXMAN (D-Los Angeles), its Government Reform Committee chairman and also Jewish; Rep. NICK RAHALL (D-W.Va.), an Arab American who is chairman of the House Resources Committee; Rep. KEITH ELLISON (D-Minn.), a freshman who is the first Muslim American member of Congress; Rep. DAVID HOBSON (R-Ohio), a senior Republican; and Rep. LOUISE SLAUGHTER (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Rules Committee.

“The speaker conveyed precisely what the prime minister and the acting president asked,” Lantos said. That included the traditional Israeli caveat about Syrian backing for terrorism.

“It’s obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker’s trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip,” said Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. “I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip.”[...]

“Prime Minister OLMERT immediately made it clear that she was not authorized to make any such offer to Bashar Assad,” he said. “Fortunately, I think the various parties involved recognize she doesn’t speak for the United States in those circumstances, she doesn’t represent the administration. The president is the one who conducts foreign policy, not the speaker of the House.”

In fact, White House frustration might have to do with a foreign policy spinning out of its control.

After the White House berated Pelosi for even daring to visit Assad, it was REVEALED that congressional REPUBLICAN DELEGATIONS WERE IN DAMASCUS at about the same time, just as eager to relay the same message as the Pelosi team: Talking is better than not talking.

“Dialogue is not a sign of weakness,” Rep. JEW PITTS (R-Pa.) told his hometown newspaper, the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, after he returned home. “It’s a sign of strength.”
http://www.jewishjournal.com/world/article/pelosis_delegation_to_syria_who_said_what_to_whom_20070413/

Obama got major support from the ME during his campaign. Did he promise the Muslim Brotherhood a seat at the table? Did all the dialogue and his talks as president in the ME lead to the current unrest one might wonder.