Men walk along a street piled with damaged buildings by what activists said was shelling by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in the besieged town of Homs, yesterday.
CAIRO: Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi and top judges agreed yesterday to seek a compromise to defuse a battle over Islamist attempts to force out thousands of judges that have deeply polarised the Arab world’s most populous nation.
Mursi’s Islamist allies had proposed legislation to purge more than 3,000 judges at a stroke by reducing their mandatory retirement age to 60 from 70 to sweep away senior jurists appointed under autocratic former President Hosni Mubarak.
But after nearly three hours of talks, the president’s office and the Supreme Judicial Council said they had agreed to hold a conference on the future of the justice system that would work out a reform acceptable to both sides.
The deal appeared to be a significant climbdown by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the face of fierce resistance to its push for a fast-track law to “cleanse the judiciary”.
A presidential spokesman said in a statement read on state television that Mursi had praised the idea of a justice conference and would start preparatory sessions at the presidency tomorrow.
Mursi would “personally adopt all the conclusions of this conference in draft laws and present them to the legislative council,” he said.
Mohamed Mumtaz, president of the Supreme Judicial Council, gave an almost identically worded statement.
A judicial source said discussion of the Islamist draft law that sparked an outcry among judges, lawyers, opposition parties and civil rights groups, would be frozen until after the conference and the president would present a new draft. REUTERS
