Egypt accuses Israel of meddling with US ties

“Egypt rejects and denounces the Israeli government’s interference in the US Congress’s decision to suspend USD 100 million in military aid to Egypt,” Awad said.

The US Congress last week froze the aid until US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could certify that Egypt was doing enough to stem the flow of arms into the Gaza Strip where the Islamist movement Hamas took over in June.

Awad said the Israeli accusations, increasingly frequent in recent days, were a way of distracting attention from Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank and from the lack of success from last month’s US-hosted peace meeting in the city of Annapolis.

“Israel’s accusations towards Egypt are a smokescreen to deflect attention from the ongoing settlement construction and the failure to follow up on Annapolis,” he said.

A senior Barak aide rejected the charges of interference, saying “Israel has never acted in that way and will never do so because in the end our joint interests are much stronger than this issue.”