John Kerry meets with Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo

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From FOX News: CAIRO – Sen. John Kerry has met in Cairo with members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that’s set to dominate the new parliament.

In a statement, the Muslim Brotherhood says three of its top officials attended the meeting with the Massachusetts Democrat, who was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson.

Brotherhood officials vowed to respect civil rights and international treaties that have been signed in the past. That assurance could be an attempt to calm fears that the group may try to re-examine Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel.

The group says Kerry told the Brotherhood’s members that he’s not surprised by their success in parliamentary elections.

The elections were the first since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted.

Kerry, who is also chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was among the first U.S. politicians to call on Mubarak to step down earlier this year.

The Egypt News says Kerry’s visit to Islamists is an admittance of their sign of strength.

Salafist leader Hazem Salah Abou-Ismail said on Sunday the contact United States Senator John Kerry has made with the Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday underlines the Islamists strength.

Kerry, head of the US Senate foreign relations committee, visited the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) on Saturday, a few hours after meeting Egypt’s de facto ruler Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.

“The American administration’s contact with Islamists is a sign of victory for us,” Abou-Ismail, who intends to run in the upcoming presidential elections in June 2012, told reporters.

“It also shows that the Americans know well the desires of the Egyptian people.”

The FJP, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood – which was banned from entering politics by the regime of former Egypt president Hosni Mubarak – claimed an overwhelming victory in the first phase of the parliamentary elections.

Salafist Al-Nour party, which espouses an ultra-conservative brand of Islam, came second in the voting. The final outcome of the election will not be known until the rest of the country votes in two more stages, a process that will last until 11 January.

Kerry said earlier on Saturday that the election results should be accepted by Egyptian people.

“Washington will deal with any government that is chosen and elected by its people, but it’s natural that we do not agree on everything. Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance which respects all people,” he added.

The Muslim Brotherhood, who hasn’t outright called for an end to the treaty with Israel, will now be under pressure from their Salafist peers to do just that.

Kerry, who’s broadcast his stance on the uprising via al Jazeera, believed that the decades old “Mubarak policy” was in need of change back in March.

The move to champion “democracy” thus came early in the cycle of the Egyptian revolution. From Davos 2011, where business elites and politicians paid entrance fees running to half a million dollars, Senator John Kerry broadcast his position via an AL-Jazeera interview and New York Times op-ed. While he generously dubbed Mubarak “a great nationalist,” Kerry admitted the possibility of cutting loose the trusty but creaky dictator and holding free elections. “For three decades, the United States pursued a Mubarak policy,” he said. “Now we must look beyond the Mubarak era and devise an Egyptian policy.”

So does a fundamental Islamist revolution translate to “championing ‘democracy'”, considering their historic “freedoms” denied to the citizens of these countries?

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Kerry is as Kerry does — and has done in the past

Kerry’s lifelong habbit is that of meeting with the US enemies. Once a traitor, always a traitor!

Too bad the meeting was not held in Hanoi.