A former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt‘s first democratically elected president, Morsi sought in a 90-minute interview with the New York Times to introduce himself to the U.S. public and to revise the terms of relations between his country and the U.S. after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, an autocratic but reliable ally.

He said it was up to the U.S. to repair relations with the Arab world and to revitalize the alliance with Egypt, long a cornerstone of regional stability.

If the U.S. is asking Egypt to honor its treaty with Israel, he said, Washington also should live up to its own Camp David commitment to Palestinian self-rule. He said the U.S. must respect the Arab world’s history and culture, even when it conflicts with Western values.

And he dismissed criticism from the White House that he did not move fast enough to condemn protesters who recently climbed over the U.S. Embassy wall and burned the American flag in anger over a video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad.

Morsi, who will travel to New York today for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, arrives at a delicate moment. He faces political pressure at home to prove his independence, but demands from the West for reassurance that Egypt under Islamist rule will remain a stable partner.

He suggested that Egypt would not be hostile to the West, but would not be as compliant as Mubarak either.

His silence in the immediate aftermath of the embassy protest elicited a tense telephone call from Obama, who also told a television interviewer that at that moment he did not consider Egypt an ally, if not an enemy either.

When asked if he considered the United States an ally, Morsi answered in English, “That depends on your definition of ally,” smiling at his deliberate echo of Obama.