CAIRO HAS accused the US of interfering in Egypt's affairs after Washington called for the deployment of monitors to observe next weekend's parliamentary election.
"The latest positions taken by the administration towards Egyptian internal affairs is something that is absolutely unacceptable," a foreign ministry statement declared.
"It is as if the United States has turned into a caretaker of how Egyptian society should conduct its politics. Whoever thinks that this is possible is deluded."
On Monday, the US state department called on Egypt to hold free and fair elections and permit foreign monitors to scrutinise the November 28th balloting. Previous elections have been discredited by manipulation and marred by violence and intimidation.
Egypt reacted strongly only after US president Barack Obama met a group of senior foreign policy analysts and advisers who advocate reforms in Egypt.
Egypt's statement characterised the gathering as belonging to "the type of groups that want to spread chaos in the Middle East without considering the consequences of their vision".
The statement was unusually forceful from a US ally which has received about $2 billion (€1.4 billion) annually in aid from Washington since it concluded its 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Egypt is currently promoting negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis.
Human rights organisations here have expressed concern that polling will not be free and fair because the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has preordained the outcome by excluding judicial officials from polling stations and using the election commission to manipulate the pro- cess of electing a new parliament.
There are 5,200 candidates standing for 508 elected seats in the popular assembly. President Hosni Mubarak is set to appoint the remaining 10 representatives. Some 1,100 candidates represent 14 political parties, while 4,100 are running as independents. Three hundred and eighty women are standing for 64 reserved seats.
The NDP is fielding 780 official candidates, rather than one nominee per seat. This means some will be competing for the same seats. A large number of the independents are also NDP members who have not received the blessing of the party.
The liberal Wafd party, Egypt's oldest, has put forward 250 candidates, the second largest list of contestants. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is officially banned but tolerated, originally backed 132 independents but this number was reduced to 75 by disqualification. Yesterday its supporters clashed with police in Cairo, where about 100 arrests were made, and in Alexandria, where violence erupted at an election rally of a Brotherhood candidate. At least 900 members of the movement have been detained in the build-up to the election.
The NDP is eager to avoid a repetition of the 2005 poll when the Brotherhood took 88 seats and the opposition as a whole won 25 per cent of the seats. However, the NDP also wants enough opposition candidates to win to lend credibility to the election.
This election is particularly important because Egyptians are set to vote next year in a presidential election which could determine if President Mubarak (82) will stand again or be succeeded by his son Gamal (47), head of the NDP's policy-making committee. The NDP remains divided on this issue. When backers of Gamal Mubarak tried to draft him several weeks ago, a party spokesman declared that the president intended to stand for re-election.