Egypt criticises US meeting with Brotherhood members

CAIRO, May 27 (Reuters) Egypt criticised the United States government today for meeting with parliamentarians from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful opposition group.

A four-person congressional delegation led by Congressman David Price, a North Carolina Democrat, held talks with President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday before meeting with a group of Egyptian lawmakers, including Mohamed Saad al-Katatni, who heads the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc.

Presidential spokesman Suleiman Awad told reporters the US willingness to meet with members of an outlawed group on the grounds they are members of parliament was contradictory, given that the United States refuses to deal with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that swept to power in elections in 2006.

''But when it comes to Egypt, it (the United States) says it's distinguishing between the Brotherhood as an outlawed organisation and its representatives in parliament,'' Awad said.

The government refuses to let the Brotherhood, which renounced violence in the 1960s, form a political party and calls it an illegal organisation.

Brotherhood members are vulnerable to detention and questioning at any time because the authorities consider membership, or any kind of political organising or fundraising for the group, to be against the law.

Awad added that the United States could do as it wished, but Egypt would also do what it wished to ''protect national security'' and to keep religion and politics separate.

Muslim Brotherhood members, standing as independents to get around a long-standing ban on the group, won 88 of the 454 seats in parliament in 2005, confirming their status as the main opposition force in the Arab world's most populous country.

That result made the Brotherhood the biggest opposition bloc in the house and alarmed the government, which has moved to stop the group before it makes more electoral gains that could help it mount a serious threat to Mubarak's rule, analysts say.

Hundreds of Brotherhood loyalists have been arrested in the latest clampdown, including third-in-command Khairat el-Shatir who was transferred to a military court along with 39 other members on charges including money laundering and terrorism, charges the Brotherhood denies.

US embassy officials could not be reached for comment.

REUTERS RN PK KP2224