Egypt, which has blacklisted the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, on Monday urged other members of the Arab League to follow suit.
AFP reported that Egypt called on Arab League members to enforce a counterterrorism treaty that would block funding and support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Cairo also wants the League’s members to hand over wanted Islamists linked to the Brotherhood, to which deposed president Mohammed Morsi belongs, the report said.
Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said that Arab League members that signed the 1998 counterterrorism treaty should enforce it against the Brotherhood.
The treaty coordinates anti-terrorism measures between signatories.
“The signatories are responsible for implementing the treaty,” Abdelatty told AFP, adding that members would have to stop financing the group and hand over Brotherhood fugitives to Egypt.
An Arab League official told the news agency that 18 of the Arab League’s 22 members had ratified the treaty.
Egypt’s designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror group came a day after a massive suicide car bombing in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura killed 16 people and wounded more than 100.
The Mansoura attack was claimed by Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, a Sinai-based Al Qaeda-inspired group which has claimed various attacks in and outside the Sinai peninsula, but Egypt’s government has said that there is a link between the Muslim Brotherhood and the ongoing terrorism in the country.
A senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has blasted the decision to declare the organization a “terrorist group” and said the Islamists in Egypt would continue with their near-daily demonstrations despite the blacklist.
Morsi and dozens of Brotherhood leaders face trials on various charges, including plotting terror attacks in Egypt.
Some of the group’s leaders have fled the country, and its media operation is now based in the United Kingdom.
Egypt has launched a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since the terror designation and has arrested dozens of its members.
Also arrested were three Al-Jazeera journalists who are accused of having met with the Muslim Brotherhood.
