The Muslim Brotherhood favours cooperation with all countries and the West has no cause to fear its intentions, according to a senior member the Islamist group that could end up playing a prominent role in a future government in Egypt.

In a phone interview with The Tribune from Cairo, Essam el-Erian said the Muslim Brotherhood wants “cooperation all over the world.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate, non-violent, Islamic organisation,” el-Erian said, adding, “We want a civil democratic state which provides all citizens who are equal with prosperity, equality, justice and freedom.”

In an interview broadcast on Egyptian TV last week, Omar Suleiman, the country’s first Vice-President in almost three decades, injected anti-US sentiment into the unrest sweeping his country by accusing outsiders of interfering in Egypt’s internal affairs.

However, el-Erian said it was Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who is to blame for allowing foreign “interference.”

“We must start the story from the beginning,” el-Erian said, adding, “Who made the deterioration in the institutions in Egypt and who brought this crisis? It is policies [of the Mubarak government], the dictatorship and the corruption. We are, as Egyptians, against any interference in our affairs but who allowed the US and others to interfere? That is the question.”

The Muslim Brotherhood was late to join the anti-government protests that have rocked Egypt since January 25.

Scott Atran, research director in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, said the Muslim Brotherhood had discredited itself by first saying it would not join the protests.

“No one on the streets in Egypt is really is taking the Muslim Brotherhood all that seriously, but they are very worried that the US press and the European Union are, and that this fear will be Mubarak’s only chance of survival,” Atran said.

“Now [the Muslim Brotherhood is] seen as bunglers trying to hijack things,” he added. Estimates in Egypt put the number of Muslim Brotherhood members at about 100,000 in a total population of 80 million.

Last week, opposition groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, coalesced around Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, a former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who has emerged as an internationally recognised face in a leaderless protest. They said they would support ElBaradei in negotiations with the Mubarak regime.

el-Erian said there has been no shift in the Muslim Brotherhood’s support for ElBaradei, but declined to say whether the group will support him in a presidential election.

“When election time comes and we know the candidates and we can see the programme for everyone then we can decide,” el-Erian said.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to implement Islamic law in Egypt, has been formally banned since 1954. Its candidates have participated in elections as independents, however, the absence of fair elections has made it difficult to gauge the group’s popularity.

The Muslim Brotherhood could win in a free election if it wanted to, said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Institution’s center in Doha, Qatar, in a phone interview.

“But the Brotherhood does not want to win because they know that the international community will go crazy if it does,” Hamid said.

He added that it was interesting and instructive that the group had put its support behind ElBaradei, a prominently secular figure. The Obama administration has had no contact with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Frank G. Wisner, a former US ambassador to Egypt who was dispatched by the Obama administration to Cairo last week, met with Mubarak and Suleiman but not with representatives from the Muslim Brotherhood.

London-based Metsa Rahimi, a security intelligence analyst at Janusian Security Risk Management, acknowledged concern in some world capitals that Islamist political groups may fill the vacuum left by departing or dismissed governments.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a serious contender in a new government should one be formed in Egypt, and the group has been wise in explicitly attempting to mollify the West’s concerns about it-stressing that it is a non-violent, non-radical group,” Rahimi said.

The group has the well-known slogan “Islam is the solution.” The Mubarak regime has routinely blamed unrest in Egypt on the Muslim Brotherhood and thrown its leaders in prison.

In a recent interview with ABC’s “This Week” programme, ElBaradei denied that the Muslim Brotherhood is an extremist organisation.

“This is what the regime ... sold to the West and to the US: ‘It’s either us, repression or Al Qaida-type Islamists,’” ElBaradei added.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not Al-Qaida in the waiting, said Atran, adding, Al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, has spent a lifetime vilifying the Muslim Brotherhood.

A skull that was damaged during anti-government protests in Cairo. — AFP

Cairo, February 7
Egypt’s minister of antiquities has announced that artifacts damaged by looters would be restored over the next five days. Zahi Hawass also says that steps were being taken to reopen Egypt’s famed archaeological sites, which have been closed since unrest seized the country two weeks ago.

Today’s statement said that among the objects damaged was a statue of King Tutankhamun standing on a panther and a wooden sarcophagus from the New Kingdom period, dating back roughly 3,500 years ago.

On January 28, looters broke into the museum and damaged a number of items, including two mummified skulls from the Late Period.

The museum, which is right next to the massive anti-government protests in downtown Cairo, is now being guarded by the army. — AP 

London, February 7
A NASA-led mission has provided the world's first-ever 3-D image of the sun's surface. Two satellites orbiting the sun perfectly aligned on opposite sides for the first time and took images that created the most complete picture ever of its surface.

Scientists, including those from Britain's Rutherford Appleton Lab in Oxfordshire, believe the photo is as significant as those taken of the first men on the moon and the first- ever images of our planet from outer space, the Telegraph reports.

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission, led by the US' space agency NASA, launched the two satellites in 2006 and they have been orbiting the sun ever since, according to a NASA statement.

The satellites are travelling at different speeds and so every few years they achieve 180 degrees of separation on exactly opposite sides of the sun. Chris Davis, project scientist for UK research, said: “The STEREO mission has already shown us some wonderful sights, solar eruptions arriving at the Earth to comets struggling against the solar wind.

"I’m very excited about this new stage of the mission and am looking forward to many years of unique observations,” he added. — PTI