Egypt's FM hasn't issued statements on pres. candidate US ties

Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has rejected media reports claiming that the ministry had sent an official letter to the presidential Higher Electoral Committee (HEC) regarding the nationality of a certain candidate's mother, a reference to Salafist presidential hopeful Hazem Abu Ismail. The ministry spokesman Amr Roshdy said Friday in a statement that the ministry forwarded HEC inquiries regarding all the candidates to the relevant countries in order to review their citizenship records. The ministry hasn't received any responses in this regard so far, and will forward any official statements to HEC as soon as it receives such responses , Roshdy said. The issue of Abu Ismail's mother nationality has been the subject of severe media and people speculation over the past week. Ministry of Interior (MOI) said in an official letter to HEC that the candidate's mother has entered Egypt three times using an American passport, and even gave the passport number. In a report published on Thursday, New York Times said that "the mother of Abu Ismail became an American citizen before she died, according to California public records and a Los Angeles voter registration website." A spokesman for the presidential hopeful's campaign said it had sent a delegation to the U.S. to investigate, suggesting that the documents in question could be fake. Under the current Egyptian electoral law, presidential candidates, their parents and their wives must be Egyptians and not have had acquired any foreign citizenships. Abu Ismail and his campaigners have categorically denied the reports, dismissing them as a conspiracy to take the Salafist candidate out of the first post-Mubarak presidential race. Abu Ismail is a known outspoken critic of the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), having previously called for anti-SCAF marches to protest the military policies in running the transitional period. HEC said that files of presidential candidates would be examined on April 12 and 13 and that any candidate not meeting the requirements, would be informed and would then have 48 hours to appeal. The final list of candidates is set to be released on April 26 according to the committee's plan, before the vote takes place on May 23-24 with a runoff round scheduled for June 16-17.