For the first time in half a century, the Egyptian regime today publicly held talks with the Muslim Brotherhood, a powerful Islamist opposition group which remains banned in Egypt.

The talks represent a remarkable turnaround for both the government and the Brotherhood, which could now provide the regime with a key to moving beyond the political turmoil engulfing the Middle East's most populous Arab nation.

Officials from the organisation, which has participated in nearly two weeks of anti-government protests but says it did not organise them, defended their participation in the talks convened by Vice President Omar Suleiman.

"We have been invited. We will go. But our participation is conditional on giving the youth representation," Brotherhood spokesman Essam al-Arian said earlier.

"If the demands of the youth are not met, we have the right to reconsider our position."

And a Brotherhood leader said after the initial talks that an offer by the regime to include opposition members on a panel to pilot democratic reform did not go far enough.

The Brotherhood found itself invited to the talks after unprecedented demonstrations against the Egyptian regime, inspired by a popular revolt in Tunisia last month.

The protests, calling for an end to President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, have seen the Brotherhood take to the streets alongside secular activists, leftists and young Egyptians who helped organise demonstrations on Facebook and Twitter.

The Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, was disbanded in 1948 and again in 1954 and has been officially banned ever since.

But its wide social services network has functioned fairly unchallenged and the group has successfully fielded political candidates as "independents" in recent elections.

Rabab al-Mahdi, a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, said the government's invitation to the Brotherhood showed the organisation was a force to be reckoned with despite its official status.

"With Vice President Suleiman urging them to meet, it is the proof that they are already legalised," she told AFP.

"These are not the first contacts, but they are the first official contacts" since the group was banned, said Tewfik Aclimandos, a researcher at the College de France.

He said it was too early to talk about the possibility of the Brotherhood being legalised, but that the organisation could eventually gain legal status if its dialogue with the regime helped find a way out of the political crisis.

The National Coalition for Change, a grouping of opposition activists that includes the Brotherhood, has called for Mubarak's immediate departure, the formation of a transitional government, the lifting of Egypt's emergency law, and constitutional reforms that would allow the group to stand in elections.

"Legalisation would bring a lot to the Brotherhood," giving them freedom of movement and association, the right to participate in elections, and access to the media, Aclimandos said.

For many analysts, it remains unclear whether the dialogue initiated by the authorities three days earlier and joined by the Brotherhood today, is simply a government strategy to win time while the opposition loses steam.

But if the regime is truly seeking a negotiated solution to the crisis, the Brotherhood is key, said Aclimandos.

"A way out of the crisis is not possible without the Muslim Brotherhood, because they are the premier opposition force in the country," he said.

Aclimandos said the group has retained a theocratic agenda, despite its democratic stance, a problem for Western politicians who have found themselves trapped between their promotion of democracy and their fear of political Islam.

"Of course they are afraid. Islamophobia is predominant not only in European and North American society, but in their governments ... They fear it might end up in an Islamic state," Mahdi said.

"But that is mistaken," she said, adding that governments in Europe and the United States were lumping together a wide range of Islamist movements with very different agendas.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today cautiously welcomed the inclusion of the Brotherhood in regime talks, but said Washington would "wait and see" what results the dialogue yields.

But in a sign of ongoing discomfort with the Islamic movement, senior Republican Senator John McCain told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine that including the group in a future government would be a mistake.

"They are an extremist group whose main objective is the installation of Sharia (Islamic) law," he was quoted as saying. "It's anti-democratic from top to bottom, particularly when it concerns women's rights."

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.