CAIRO: Egypt’s interim President Adli Mansour promised yesterday to fight those driving the nation towards chaos, hours before the Muslim Brotherhood plans mass protests to demand the return of ousted Islamist leader Mohammed Mursi.
Brotherhood supporters will take to the streets today in their campaign to reverse the military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely-elected president, but the movement also gave a first sign of willingness to negotiate with its opponents.
Mansour pledged in his first public address since he was sworn in on July 4 to restore stability and security.
“We are going through a critical stage and some want us to move towards chaos and we want to move towards stability. Some want a bloody path,” he said in a televised address. “We will fight a battle for security until the end.”
The rallies aim to show that Mursi’s supporters are not ready to accept the new military-backed government. However, a Brotherhood official also told Reuters yesterday that the movement had proposed a framework for talks mediated by the EU.
Sworn into office on Tuesday, the cabinet of interim premier Hazem El-Beblawy busied itself with tackling Egypt’s many crises, buying foreign wheat to replenish stocks and banking $3bn in badly needed aid from the United Arab Emirates.
Brotherhood official Gehad El-Haddad, who represented the movement in previous EU-facilitated talks with other political groups, told Reuters that the organisation would not retreat from its demand for the reinstatement of Mursi.
Egypt, the most populous nation in the Arab world, is a strategic hinge between the Middle East and North Africa and has long been a vital US ally in the region.
The African Union warned yesterday that Egypt risked being engulfed by civil war unless its government embraced Islamists, none of whom were included in the 33-strong cabinet.
Egypt’s Nour Party, the country’s second-biggest Islamist group which had initially backed a military-led roadmap to guide the country to new elections, said yesterday the government would have to seek a way forward with the Brotherhood.
At least 99 people have died in violence since Mursi’s downfall.
REUTERS
