BICOM

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood officials said yesterday that the group was debating whether to field its own candidate in Egypt’s upcoming presidential contest, after failing to persuade several outside figures to run with the group’s backing.

The Brotherhood had previously said it would not nominate a candidate for president, for fear of provoking a response from the country’s military or appearing too dominant on Egypt’s political landscape in the eyes of the electorate. Any candidate chosen by the popular Brotherhood, an Islamist group whose political wing won nearly half the seats in Parliament, could quickly emerge as a front-runner for the presidency.

Members of the Shura Council, the policy-making body within the Brotherhood, planned to debate this friday, officials with the group said. Mahmoud Hussein, the Brotherhood’s secretary general, said, “The Shura Council was the one that made the decision not to nominate any Muslim Brotherhood member for the presidency, and it is the one that has the power to retract the decision.” He added, “All options are open.”

In unrelated news, Israel cleared out its embassy building in Egypt yesterday six months after its offices were attacked and ransacked by protesters. Egyptian Officials said that two Israeli military planes left Cairo, loaded with documents and equipment removed from the embassy.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Israel had decided not to return to the old embassy premises in an apartment block next to the Nile. “We are looking for a new place, and meanwhile (the contents) have been standing unused, and finding a new office will take a while,” Palmor said. “It’s complicated to find a place for the embassy as it has to fill many needs, accessibility and security,” he said. “So it’s taking time. It’s not as easy in Cairo as it used to be,” Palmor added.