* Salafi says army hand over to civilians will take time
* Says Egypt needs consensus president
* Nour Party took part in workshops with U.S. NGO
CAIRO, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The head of Egypt's leading
ultra-conservative Islamist party believes it will take time for
the ruling military to hand power to civilians but says the army
cannot enjoy a privileged status "above the constitution".
In an interview with Reuters, Emad Abdel Ghaffour said the
next president should enjoy broad support to steer Egypt through
the turbulent transition it has witnessed since President Hosni
Mubarak was toppled in a popular uprising last year.
He also praised the work of a U.S.-based democracy group
being investigated by the authorities, saying it had enriched
political life.
For a representative of a movement that has defined itself
by opposition to all things Western, his remarks on the role of
U.S.-backed NGOs under threat were remarkably positive.
Abdel Ghaffour's Nour Party won more than a fifth of the
seats in the newly-elected parliament, taking many by surprise
and making it the biggest of the ultraconservative Salafi groups
to have emerged in the year since Mubarak was swept from office.
The military council which assumed power from Mubarak has
pledged to hand power to an elected president by mid-year.
"What we say is they must hand over (power) now, but let us
be realistic, this will take time," Abdel Ghaffour said during
an interview this week at his office in the Cairo suburb of
Maadi on the east bank of the river Nile.
"This is the truth that separates our vision from the
youth," he said, referring to protest groups that are demanding
the military's immediate departure from power.
The Salafis are ultra-orthodox even among fundamentalists,
employing the beliefs and practices of the earliest period of
Islam as a shield against what they see as Western pollution and
modernist deviation.
The Salafi ideology is akin to the Wahhabi strain of
puritanical Islam espoused in Saudi Arabia and which has
inspired the militancy of al Qaeda and others. Many of their
critics say the Salafis are financed with Gulf Arab money, a
charge Abdel Ghaffour dismissed.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has said it will
hand power to an elected president at the end of June, though
activists demanding fast democratic reform worry the generals
will try to exercise control from behind the scenes.
Abdel Ghaffour said an assembly due to write Egypt's new
constitution would insist on "the army being an important and
great institution".
"But it must be subject to the rule of the nation and the
law and the constitution," he said.
Since army officers overthrew the monarch in 1952, all of
Egypt's presidents have hailed from the military, something
reformists say has helped the institution to develop extensive
political and economic influence.
The Islamists have angered other reformists for appearing
too supportive of the army-led government during a year that
rights groups say has seen civilians sent to military trials at
rates not even witnessed in Mubarak's days.
The Nour Party had criticised the military council "in many
matters", Abdel Ghaffour said. But he praised the army for
overseeing Egypt's most democratic elections in six decades.
ENRICHING POLITICAL LIFE
He said the Nour Party attended training organised by the
National Democratic Institute - one of the U.S.-based democracy
groups whose workers are accused of breaking the law by
operating without proper licences and receiving foreign funds
illegally.
The case has strained ties between the United States and
Egypt, endangering the annual $1.3 billion in military aid Cairo
receives from Washington.
"The things that we took part in were things that I do not
think broke the law, for example, measuring public opinion ...
and monitoring party manifestos," Abdel Ghaffour said. "There's
no doubt it was a type of enrichment of political life."
Asked about what might be motivating the case, he said: "It
seems it is mixed: procedural and political."
The Nour Party came second only to the Muslim Brotherhood,
the long-established Islamist group that emerged with more than
43 percent of the seats in parliament. Though both Islamist
groups, the parties have appeared more rivals than allies.
Abdel Ghaffour, who has the long beard that marks out
Salafis, said the Brotherhood had steered clear of the Nour
Party in an attempt to project a moderate image.
Like the Brotherhood, the Nour Party has so far decided not
to field a candidate for the presidential election. Abdel
Ghaffour attributed that decision to a desire to ease the fears
of other Egyptians alarmed by the Islamists' election success.
EGYPT NEEDS A CHARLES DE GAULLE
The new head of state must be able to "lead an Egypt in
which there is consensus among the political blocs", he said.
But the candidate must not be opposed to Islamic sharia law "in
political life", he added.
Abdel Ghaffour said he saw nothing wrong with the
widely-accepted constitutional clause describing the principles
of sharia as the main source for legislation, as long as it was
better applied. More hardline Salafis want the clause changed to
demand tight adherence to the letter of Islamic law.
Abdel Ghaffour said his party would not force conservative
changes on Egypt, such as segregating girls and boys at school
or in the work place. "I do not support obliging the people to
(adhere to) a specific system," he said.
"This is a matter that can be left to the people."
Addressing the tourist industry that employs one in eight
Egyptians, he said talk that the party wanted to segregate
beaches, for example, aimed to "distort" its reputation.
He criticised what he described as the Mubarak regime's
failure to develop the tourism industry. "If we compare the
pyramids with the Eiffel Tower in France, we find a great
difference between the services provided," he said.
He also saw France as a model in another way, naming Charles
de Gaulle as a foreign leader he admired.
"In Egypt, we need someone like this ... who can gather the
nation around a strong national feeling that can get Egypt out
of the crisis it is in," he said.
(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad and Edmund Blair; Writing
by Tom Perry)
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