Wikileaks: "US officials 'consistently skeptical' of Suleiman's effort to depict the Brotherhood as the bogey man ..."

"... Omar Suleiman, has long sought to demonize the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in his contacts with skeptical U.S. officials, leaked diplomatic cables show, raising questions whether he can act as an honest broker in the country's political crisis. U.S. Embassy messages from the anti-secrecy WikiLeaks cache of 250,000 State Department documents, which Reuters independently reviewed, also report that the former intelligence chief accused the Brotherhood of spawning armed extremists and warned in 2008 that if Iran ever backed the banned Islamist group, Tehran would become "our enemy."

The disclosure came as Suleiman met on Sunday with opposition groups, including the officially banned Brotherhood, to explore ways to end Egypt's worst political crisis decades.... Suleiman privately voicing disdain for the Brotherhood will not surprise Egyptians, used to the Mubarak government's anti-Islamist stance. The comments could stoke suspicions, though, as he seeks to draw the long-banned movement into a broad dialogue on reform in response to mass protests. The clear implication in the cache of State Department cables was that U.S. officials were skeptical of Suleiman's effort to depict the Brotherhood as "the bogey man." Mubarak's government had long cited the Islamist threat to justify its years of authoritarian rule. A more pressing concern for Washington and its ally Israel, however, is what happens to the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and the Jewish state if the Brotherhood gains political clout in the post-Mubarak era...... Suleiman, then Mubarak's top spymaster, was speaking to FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was visiting Cairo in February 2006, the 2006 cable says..... "Iran is supporting Jihad and spoiling peace, and has supported extremists in Egypt previously. If they were to support the Muslim Brotherhood this would make them "our enemy," the ambassador reported Suleiman as saying. ...... The cables suggest U.S. officials have consistently responded skeptically to the Egyptian government's dire warnings about the Brotherhood. In a November 29, 2005, cable to Mueller before his visit, Ricciardone said Egyptian authorities "have a long history of threatening us with the MB bogeyman.".."