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Egypt: Mursi Rejects Army’s 48-Hours Ultimatum

Egypt: Mursi Rejects Army’s 48-Hours Ultimatum
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Local Editor

Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi rejected the army's 48-hour ultimatum to resolve the country's deadly crisis, saying it will only sow confusion.


Egypt: Mursi Rejects Army’s 48-Hours UltimatumMursi insisted that he will continue with his own plans for national reconciliation, a presidential statement said early on Tuesday.
The army warned it will intervene if the government and its opponents fail to heed "the will of the people".

However, it denied that the ultimatum amounts to a coup.

Meanwhile, Egypt's state news agency Mena reported early on Tuesday that Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr had submitted his resignation.
If accepted, he would join at least five other ministers who have already reportedly resigned over the political crisis.

On Sunday, millions rallied nationwide, urging the president to step down.

Large protests continued on Monday, and eight people died as activists stormed and ransacked Cairo's Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, to which the president belongs.
Mursi's opponents accuse him of putting the Brotherhood's interests ahead of the country's as a whole.
He became Egypt's first Brotherhood president on 30 June 2012, after winning an election considered free and fair following the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
In an announcement read out on Egyptian TV, Gen Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, defense minister and head of the armed forces, described the protests as an "unprecedented" expression of the popular will.

The statement by the minister of defense and army chief, Gen al-Sisi, was worded carefully.

The army, with troops in strategic positions across Cairo, is saying the government and opposition have 48 hours to agree a way forward or it will intervene with its own plan.
If the people's demands were not met, he said, the military would have to take responsibility for a plan for the future.

Noisy celebrations erupted in Cairo as protesters interpreted the army's ultimatum as spelling the end of Mursi's rule.
Hundreds of thousands of flag-waving supporters of Tamarod (Rebel) - the opposition movement behind the protests - partied in Cairo's Tahrir Square late into the night.
Meanwhile, senior Brotherhood figure Muhammad al-Biltaji urged pro-Mursi supporters to "call their families in all Egyptian governorates and villages to be prepared to take to the streets and fill squares" to support their president.

"Any coup of any sort will only pass over our dead bodies," he said to a roar from thousands gathered outside the Rab'ah al-Adawiyah mosque in Cairo's Nasr district.
There were reports of gun clashes between rival factions in the city of Suez, east of the capital, on Monday night.
The army later issued a second statement on its Facebook page emphasizing that it "does not aspire to rule and will not overstep its prescribed role".

According to Tuesday's presidential statement, President Mursi was not consulted ahead of the ultimatum announcement. It said that such action would "cause confusion in the complex national environment".
The opposition movement had given Mursi until Tuesday afternoon to step down and call fresh presidential elections, or else face a campaign of civil disobedience.
On Saturday, the group said it had collected more than 22 million signatures - more than a quarter of Egypt's population - in support.

And on Monday the ministers of tourism, environment, communication, water utilities and legal affairs reportedly resigned in an act of "solidarity with the people's demand to overthrow the regime".

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team


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