(Wall Street Journal) Matt Bradley - The leading candidate in Egypt's presidential race said that if he was elected he would break with former President Hosni Mubarak's reliably amenable policies toward Israel. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Amr Moussa also described a political landscape in which the Muslim Brotherhood, outlawed under Mubarak, is dominant. It is inevitable, he said, that parliamentary elections in September will usher in a legislature led by a bloc of Islamists, with the Brotherhood at the forefront. Moussa owes the bulk of his popularity to his trenchant criticism of Israel and the U.S. while he was foreign minister. In recent years, for example, he has said Israel's unacknowledged nuclear program poses a bigger threat than Iran's program. In a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 89% of Egyptians said they had a positive impression of Moussa - far ahead of competitors such as Ayman Nour, of whom 70% approved. Mohammed ElBaradei rated 57% approval.
2011-05-06 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive