CAIRO: The first senior US official to visit Egypt since the army toppled its elected president was snubbed by both Islamists and their opponents yesterday, while huge crowds of supporters of the ousted leader demonstrated in the streets.
After meeting the interim head of state and the prime minister, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns insisted he was not in town “to lecture anyone”. But many on either side of Egypt’s divide suspect Washington of plotting against them.
A huge crowd of supporters of Islamist Mohammed Mursi poured into a square near a mosque in northeast Cairo carrying a giant Egyptian flag, banners and portraits of the detained leader. Accusing the United States of backing a military coup, thousands of Mursi’s partisans have kept a vigil there since the days before the army toppled him on July 3, swelling to tens of thousands for mass protests every few days. Burns arrived in a divided capital where both sides are furious at the United States, which supports Egypt with $1.5bn a year in mostly military aid.
“Only Egyptians can determine their future. I did not come with American solutions. Nor did I come to lecture anyone,” Burns told a brief news conference.
The State Department said Burns would meet “civil society groups” as well as government officials. But the Islamist Nour Party and the Tamarud anti-Mursi protest movement both said they had turned down invitations to meet him. REUTERS
