JERUSALEM (JTA) — Jimmy Carter said after what he called long discussions with Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt that the group will try to modify the country’s peace treaty with Israel.
The former U.S. president said May 26 following the conclusion of the first round of voting in Egypt’s free presidential elections that the Muslim Brotherhood would seek to modify, but not destroy, the pact signed between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat in 1979, Reuters reported.
The Carter Center helped monitor the elections.
"My opinion is that the treaty will not be modified in any unilateral way," Carter said at a news conference in Cairo.
Carter brought Sadat and Begin to Camp David in 1978, where they signed peace accords months before the peace treaty was signed at the White House.
The official first-round election results are due on Tuesday. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, a runoff election will be held.
Preliminary results show that one of the runoff candidates, Mohamed Morsi, will come from the Muslim Brotherhood.
