Cairo, Egypt - Egypt must find ways to deal with the illegal and "negative" participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the country's political life, President
Hosni Mubarak's powerful son said in a newspaper interview.
The Islamist movement is officially banned but it fielded candidates as independents in the November-December parliamentary elections, winning a fifth of the seats in parliament.
"The question of how we should deal at the political and legal levels with attempts to circumvent the national consensus banning religious parties is on the table," Gamal Mubarak told the state-owned Roz al-Yusef daily.
The 42-year-old head of the ruling party's policies secretariat deplored the Muslim Brotherhood's "use of religion and religious slogans to achieve political gains" in the polls.
In the fourth part of his interview with Roz al-Yusef, he described the movement's participation in parliament as "having negative repercussions on the electoral and political process."
The movement led a well-crafted and aggressive campaign under the slogan "Islam is the solution" which saw it increase its parliamentary representation sixfold and was seen by observers as a setback for the ruling party.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which spawned many extremist groups in the region but has long renounced violence, now holds 88 seats in the People's Assembly, making it the largest opposition force in the country.