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Sun, May 08, 2011 | Jerusalem Post | By Oren Kessler

Amr Moussa

Egypt: Amr Moussa Vows Tough Israel Policy if Elected President

Amr Moussa, the outgoing Arab League chief and leading candidate for Egypt’s presidency, said Friday that if elected he would break with Hosni Mubarak’s consistently favorable policies toward Israel. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Moussa said the former president’s efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had “led nowhere” and that Cairo needs new policies that “reflect the consensus of the people.”

Moussa, 74, also described a political landscape in which the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood would be dominant. It is inevitable, he said, that parliamentary elections slated for September would bring about a legislature led by a Brotherhood-led Islamist bloc.

“Mubarak had a certain policy, it was his own policy and I don’t think we have to follow this,” he said of relations with Israel. “We want to be a friend of Israel, but it has to have two parties, it is not on Egypt to be a friend. Israel has to be a friend, too,” he said.

Moussa, Mubarak’s foreign minister from 1991 to 2001, told the paper he would run as an independent, and if elected would not be beholden to his predecessor’s policies. “We live in the 21st century and we have to be part and parcel with those who influence the current circumstances in the region or in the world,” he said, referring to the wave of unrest that unseated the presidents of Egypt and Tunisia and severely undermined other leaders of the Arab world. “We were outside this circle. We have to get back to it as partners in leading the world,” he said.

A recent Pew Research Center poll found 89% of Egyptians had a positive impression of Moussa, far ahead of competitors like reformist Ayman Nour (70%) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohammed ElBaradei (57%). Much of that support stems from his consistently combative attitude toward Israel and the US — on several occasions in recent years he has described Israel’s reputed nuclear program as a greater threat to world peace than that of Iran.

Moussa said one of the reasons for his 2001 dismissal as foreign minister was a disagreement over Egypt’s policy toward Israel. “There was a conflict between us, no question,” Moussa said of then-president Mubarak. “A disagreement…over certain policies, including, but not only, the Israeli policies, which I found leading nowhere. And they led nowhere. We are in year 11 since I left. And where are we?”

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