CAIRO: North Sinai governor Ahmed Abdel Hamid denied media claims that a delegation of US congressmen visited Arish, where it spent 20 minutes observing the security situation on the border with Israel, said Al-Masry Al-Youm. A few days earlier, Congress representatives Betty McCollum and Lincoln Davis, met on Monday with Fathi Sorour, head of the People's Assembly (PA), during their visit to Egypt. The meeting discussed Egypt-US relations as well as the role of the United States Agency for International Development, said Mohamed Khalil Kwaitah, a National Democratic Party (NDP) MP. Hamdy Hassan, MP and head of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in the 2005/2006 round, told The Daily Star Egypt that the meeting was mostly attended by members of the NDP, and that the PA purposefully excluded any members affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. "This is the PA's normal attitude towards our group, Hassan said, "they do not ask us to attend any [meetings] or represent the parliament anywhere. Kwaitah refutes the Brotherhoods' claims, recalling a US Congressional delegation - led by Congressman David Price, a North Carolina Democrat - that came to Egypt last May, meeting with members of the Brotherhood and the PA to discuses US foreign policy. In a previous interview with The Daily Star Egypt, Sobhy Saleh, a PA member affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, confirmed that this meeting took place. Moreover, both Reuters and Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that Egypt criticized the US government for meeting with PA members from the Muslim Brotherhood during their May visit. According to Reuters, Presidential Spokesman Suleiman Awad told the media that the US agrees to meet with members of the group on the premise that they are PA members. At the same time, the US refuses to meet with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that came to power as a result of the 2006 elections. During the latest meeting, Kwaitah said, PA members were wary of rumors that USAID would reduce its financial support to Egypt. McCollum and Davis said the USAID mission in Egypt is a form of cooperation between the two countries and not aid, Mostafa El-Fekki, an NDP MP told Al-Masry Al-Youm. El- Fekki stressed that foreign aid does not accompany any form of pressure on the Egyptian people. The US Embassy told The Daily Star Egypt that the Egyptian government invited the representatives from Congress, but that the embassy has no control over their scheduled meetings.
