A lawmaker from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said Thursday that there would be “no referendum” on the country’s peace treaty with Israel.
“We respect international obligations, period,” Abdul Mawgoud Dardery, a lawmaker from the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), told The Washington Times.
Asked if a Brotherhood-led government would put the 1979 Camp David Accords to a referendum, as many of the Islamist group’s leaders have promised, Mr. Dardery said no.
“No referendum at all concerning international obligations,” he said. “All our international agreements are respected by the Freedom and Justice Party, including Camp David.”
“These are ideas being circulated within Egypt,” Mr. Dardery said of a potential referendum. “That is not the stand of the Freedom and Justice Party.”
• Click here to listen to Dardery speak with TWT.
But Mr. Dardery added that the Brotherhood expects “all parties” to respect the Camp David Accords. “We will never be the first to break with the international agreements,” he said.
On Thursday, FJP presidential candidate Khairat al-Shater filed papers with Egypt’s High Presidential Elections Commission.
The Brotherhood had promised not to field a presidential candidate but changed course Saturday, citing threats to democracy from the military council that has ruled Egypt since the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak last year.
Mr. Dardery said the military’s calls to dissolve the parliament threatened to take “Egypt back to square one, where the president has sweeping powers, so we really wanted to make sure that democracy road is protected by the people of Egypt.”
Mr. Dardery is in Washington with other FJP representatives for meetings with White House and State Department officials.
• Ben Birnbaum can be reached at 138247@example.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.