Cairo - The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition group, on Saturday said US President Barack Obama's speech to the world's 1.5 billion Muslims showed the "cunning of the masters of the Zionist/American project against the sons of the Muslim nation."

In a statement sent to reporters Saturday, the group said it "completely agreed with the general principles of human rights, justice and the need for dialogue based on respect and mutual trust that Obama laid out."

But the US president's "deft use of language to win Muslims' hearts does nothing to give Muslims their rights, whether in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, where blood is shed day and night by the design of successive US administrations," the statement said.

The Muslim Brotherhood slammed Obama's expressions of support for "the Zionists in Palestine," and his "attempts to force the Palestinian people to surrender."

The US president's "focus on the myth of the Holocaust ... does not begin to justify the occupation of Palestine, the ethnic cleansing, genocide, and massacre ... of the Palestinian people, or the stifling and lethal blockade of the Gaza Strip, which Obama completely ignored," the group said.

The Brotherhood statement dismissed Obama's "attempts to tickle... Muslims" by quoting verses of the Koran and praising Islamic values and contributions to society as "a mere change in tactics" that "would not deceive Muslims."

It further criticised Obama's "brief mention of democracy" while "turning a blind eye to dictatorships and corrupt regimes that oppress their people."

The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, and its members are routinely arrested, but Brotherhood-affiliated lawmakers hold 20 per cent of the seats in the Egyptian parliament as independents.

Members of the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc attended the speech at the invitation of al-Azhar University and Cairo University, but the White House on Wednesday tacitly confirmed that the US government played a role in making sure they were invited.

"The process by which invitations are made is that we from the States had folks that we were interested in making sure were invited; the embassy obviously in Cairo played a leading role in identifying people to invite," US Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough told reporters in response to a question about the Brotherhood, on the eve of Obama's speech. (dpa)