CAIRO: The governor of Egypt’s Luxor province, controversially appointed despite belonging to a hardline Islamist group that massacred 58 tourists in Luxor in 1997, will step down “for the sake of Egypt”, the group said yesterday.
President Mohammed Mursi of the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood infuriated many last Monday with his appointment of Adel Mohamed Al Khayat, reaching out for a political alliance with the more radical Al Gamaa Al Islamiya ahead of a big wave of opposition-led protests expected to start on June 30.
But Al Gamaa Al Islamiya, which has renounced violence, appeared to want to show that it could put Egypt’s needs first — especially the tourist industry, a mainstay of the economy that has suffered badly in two years of unrest.
Safwat Abdel Ghani, one of the group’s leaders, was quoted by the state-owned Al Ahram news website as saying the governor would announce his resignation. Sources in the cabinet and the presidency said they were not aware of such move.
“We are not after any post,” Abdel Ghani told an earlier news conference. “We asked the new governor to resign for the sake of Egypt.”
Both Mursi’s Islamists and the leftist-secular opposition are trying to marshal support before June 30. Mursi’s appointment of a large number of Islamist governors including Khayat triggered protests in many cities.
Mursi himself defended the appointment of Khayat in the newspaper Akhbar Al Youm on Saturday, saying there had “never been a court ruling” against him, and cautioned that the state would act if the June 30 rally turned violent. REUTERS
