Egypt will respect peace accords, Jimmy Carter says

Egypt will not amend the terms of the Camp David Accords without Israel’s consent, former US president Jimmy Carter told President Shimon Peres on Sunday.

“I met with [Egyptian] President [Mohammed] Morsi on many occasions, both before and after the election, and asked him to respect the peace treaty with Israel,” Carter said. “Morsi assured me there will be no change in the existing agreements between Egypt and Israel without Israel’s consent.”

Carter, heading a delegation of former world leaders known as The Elders, spoke to Peres at the president’s residence in Jerusalem. The ex-president was scheduled to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Morsi in later stages of his Middle Eastern tour.

Peres told Carter that “without your involvement, the peace treaty with Egypt, signed in ’79, would not have happened, and I thank you for that.”

The Camp David accords were the basis for the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace agreement and stipulated Israel’s subsequent withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. They place restrictions on the Egyptian army’s rights to deploy forces and operate there, and prevent Egypt from effectively exerting control in the peninsula.

In light of recent unrest in the Sinai Peninsula, members of the Muslim Brotherhood have called for changes in the treaty to allow the deployment of troops to the increasingly lawless region. Presidential aide Mohammed Esmat Seif al-Dawla contended last month that the article limits Egypt’s rights to protect the Sinai Peninsula and must be changed.