Egypt's vice president demonized Islamists: WikiLeaks LONDON, Feb 6 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Egypt's new vice president, Omar Suleiman, has long sought to demonize the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in his contacts with skeptical US officials, leaked diplomatic cables show, raising questions whether he can act as an honest broker in the country's political crisis. US Embassy messages from the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks cache of 250,000 State Department documents, which Reuters independently reviewed, also report that the former intelligence chief accused the Brotherhood of spawning armed extremists and warned in 2008 that if Iran ever backed the banned Islamist group, Tehran would become "our enemy." The disclosure came as Suleiman met on Sunday with opposition groups, including the officially banned Brotherhood, to explore ways to end Egypt's worst political crisis decades. Washington has been exploring options for speeding up President Hosni Mubarak's resignation, including a scenario that calls for turning over power to a transition government headed by Suleiman and backed by the military. Mubarak, who had done without a vice president for 30 years, hurriedly appointed the 74-year-old Suleiman as his deputy on Jan. 29 as protesters demanded the autocratic ruler's ouster. Suleiman privately voicing disdain for the Brotherhood will not surprise Egyptians, used to the Mubarak government's anti-Islamist stance. The comments could stoke suspicions, though, as he seeks to draw the long-banned movement into a broad dialogue on reform in response to mass protests. The clear implication in the cache of State Department cables was that U.S. officials were skeptical of Suleiman's effort to depict the Brotherhood as "the bogey man." Mubarak's government had long cited the Islamist threat to justify its years of authoritarian rule. A more pressing concern for Washington and its ally Israel, however, is what happens to the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and the Jewish state if the Brotherhood gains political clout in the post-Mubarak era. "We decline to comment on any individual classified cable," US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said when asked about the documents seen by Reuters. ACCUSATIONS OF EXTREMISM In a cable dated Feb. 15, 2006, then-ambassador Francis Ricciardone reported that Suleiman had "asserted that the MB (Muslim Brotherhood) had spawned '11 different Islamist extremist organizations,' most notably the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Gama'a Islamiya (Islamic Group)." Egyptian security forces crushed groups that targeted tourists, Christians, government ministers and other officials in a 1990s campaign for a purist Islamic state, and has kept a tight lid on them since. The Brotherhood once had a secret paramilitary section, but it now says it is committed to promoting its policies through peaceful, democratic means. The government has been unable to prove any serious act of violence orchestrated by the movement's leadership for more than 50 years. Mubarak, in an ABC interview on Thursday, blamed the Brotherhood for violence that erupted on Wednesday during protests in Cairo's central Tahrir Square. Independent witnesses said Mubarak supporters launched the attacks. |
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