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Egypt Rivals Hold Rare Meeting and Call for Dialogue
Egypt Rivals Hold Rare Meeting and Call for Dialogue
(about 11 hours later)
CAIRO — In a rare gathering organized by young Egyptian revolutionaries, the country’s rival political groups held extraordinary talks on Thursday after days of political chaos and urged continued dialogue to counter widespread violence.
CAIRO — With Egypt’s political elites warring and street violence taking on a life of its own, young revolutionaries on Thursday tried to step into the country’s leadership vacuum, organizing a rare meeting of political forces that, in Egypt’s polarized state, was a victory in itself.
But a statement after the gathering of prominent secular opponents of President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamist allies made no direct reference to a call on Wednesday by some of Mr. Morsi’s critics for the creation of a government of national unity.
The meeting, which included representatives of secular leftist and liberal groups as well as the Muslim Brotherhood, failed to resolve some of the most divisive issues facing the country, including whether Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, would agree to form a national unity government or amend the country’s newly approved constitution, as some opposition leaders have demanded.
The talks were held under the chairmanship of the country’s leading Muslim cleric, Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb of Al Azhar mosque and university, one of the highest seats of learning in the Muslim world.
Nor was there any assurance that the meeting’s principal call — to end the violence that has led to more than 50 deaths over the last week — would be heeded on the streets. Clashes during protests have become the latest polarizing issue in Egypt’s turbulent transition, with Mr. Morsi and members of his Muslim Brotherhood movement largely blaming shadowy instigators for the violence. Others, though, have faulted the country’s poorly trained security forces for a persistently heavy-handed response to protests.
A national dialogue, the cleric said, “in which all the components of the Egyptian society participate without any exclusion” was “the only means to resolve any problems or disagreements.”
The issue has taken on new urgency in recent days, as a country on edge prepared for the latest round of Friday demonstrations.
He urged the participants to “commit to peaceful competition for power and the peaceful rotation of power” and to prohibit “all types of violence and coercion to achieve goals, demands and policies.”
The organizers of the meeting included a leader of the April 6th youth movement, three Brotherhood defectors and Wael Ghonim, a former Google executive who played a prominent role in the uprising against former president Hosni Mubarak. Group members said they met several days ago, “to look into ways of leading Egypt out of the crisis and to warn against the threats of being dragged into a cycle of violence.”
Television footage from encounter showed some of the country’s main political rivals sitting down across a table.
Those who attended the talks on Thursday included Mohamed ElBaradei, a former United Nations diplomat and the coordinator of the largest secular-leaning opposition bloc; Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister in the Mubarak era; and Hamdeen Sabahi, the founder of a Nasserist party. Television images revealed a tableau that would have been unlikely a week ago: those leaders sitting with Saad el-Katatni, the head of Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, or F.J.P., the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Facing dire warnings from the military about the country’s growing chaos, Egyptian opposition leaders from both secular-leaning and Islamist groups banded together for the first time on Wednesday to urge Mr. Morsi to form a national unity government to halt the violence that has led to dozens of deaths over the past week.
After the meeting, Mr. ElBaradei expressed what he said was “optimism” about the effort, saying, “Each of us will do what can, with good will, to build trust again among the factions of the Egyptian nation,” according to Reuters.
Those who attended the talks on Thursday included Mohamed ElBaradei, a former United Nations diplomat and prominent figure in the secular opposition, and Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister in the Mubarak era and a onetime head of the Arab League.
This week, Egypt’s defense minister warned that the state could “collapse,” in what was seen as a stern warning to both Mr. Morsi and his opponents to start acting more responsibly. In another display of high-level concern, the talks on Thursday were held under the chairmanship of the country’s leading Muslim scholar, Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb of Al Azhar mosque and university.
For the first time since the formation of the secular opposition bloc, they sat with leading Islamists including Saad al-Katatni, the head of Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
After the meeting, he said that a national dialogue, “in which all the components of the Egyptian society participate without any exclusion” was “the only means to resolve any problems or disagreements.” He urged the participants to “commit to a peaceful competition for power” and to prohibit “all types of violence and coercion to achieve goals, demands and policies.”
After the meeting, Mr. ElBaradei told reporters: “We come out of this meeting with a type of optimism. Each of us will do what we can, with good will, to build trust again among the factions of the Egyptian nation,” Reuters reported.
Despite the day’s strong statements, many doubted whether any of the participants had the influence to alter the dynamics on the ground. In the last few days, the violence has abated in the cities along the Suez Canal, including in Port Said, where most of the deaths occurred — but only after the police largely disappeared from the streets, leaving the army in charge of security. In Cairo, clashes occur daily at what has become a regular spot, at the foot of the Kasr el-Nil bridge near Tahrir Square.
Even before the gathering, though, Mr. Morsi rejected the idea of unity government during a visit to Germany, where he said a new administration would be formed only after parliamentary elections in April.
“The protests and the violence seem to not be in the full control of anyone, including the opposition,” said Samer S. Shehata, an assistant professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University and an expert on Egyptian politics. “Things are more critical in some senses than the days when Mubarak was ousted. The authority of the state is really in question. Some people are no longer accepting the legitimacy of political institutions, including the presidency — and not just the officeholder,” he said.
“In Egypt there is a stable government working day and night in the interest of all Egyptians,” Mr. Morsi said after meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
Several factors would determine whether efforts at a dialogue, like the one on Thursday, could pull Egypt from the brink, he said. They could succeed, he said, if Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood “realize the gravity of the situation, and realize, in a self-interested way, that they have lost many people who supported them previously, including many who held their noses and voted for Morsi,” he said, adding, “Will Morsi and the F.J.P. make serious concessions, including vesting the opposition in the process?”
Still, the opposition’s gamble offered the first recent indication that the nation’s political leaders were searching for common ground and a way out of the chaos. Egypt’s largest secular-leaning opposition bloc, the National Salvation Front, joined a hard-line Islamist group, the Nour party, which had been allied with the president and his movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in calling for a new government.
Even then, he said: “Will the people on the street, who aren’t following the instructions of the opposition, take the developments to heart and go home?”
The political maneuvers came a day after Egypt’s defense chief warned of “the collapse of the state” if the country’s quarreling political forces did not reconcile. The statement, by Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, was a stark reminder that Mr. Morsi’s authority had been weakened after days of protests led him to declare a state of emergency in three cities along the Suez Canal when the police lost control.
Despite the new spirit of cooperation, there were signs on Thursday that the government was continuing a pattern of “delegitimizing the opposition,” as Mr. Shehata put it. The general prosecutor’s office announced the latest arrest of a member of the Black Bloc, a mysterious and possibly minor antigovernment group that officials have labeled a terrorist organization, blaming it for some of the violence.
Egyptians have reacted with growing frustration to the political feuding in Cairo, the sense of lawlessness and the deteriorating economy. Many have warned that the standoff — between a weak and often intractable opposition movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, which has grown increasingly dismissive of its critics — could lead to even worse political violence. Days of street clashes have intensified those fears.
Several purported members of the group were arrested Wednesday. The person arrested on Thursday, the prosecutor asserted, was carrying out an “Israeli scheme” to bomb oil companies and other vital institutions, according to state news media.
As he left for Germany, Mr. Morsi abruptly backed down from some of the emergency measures he had imposed — and which the public had already ignored — saying that he would leave it to the provincial authorities to set their own curfews. On Wednesday, all three cities on the Suez Canal reduced curfews to just a few hours early in the morning.
Alan
Cowell contributed reporting from London.
The visit to Germany further highlighted Mr. Morsi’s troubles. The president, who had scheduled the visit before the protests started, was forced to cut it short, and he canceled a trip to France. At several public appearances, Mr. Morsi appeared defensive while describing the situation in Egypt. He attributed much of the violence to remnants of Egypt’s deposed government, or so-called infiltrators, including a little-known group that the Egyptian authorities have turned into a scapegoat and called a national security threat.
On Tuesday, Egypt’s public prosecutor declared that the group, which calls itself the Black Bloc, was a terrorist organization and issued warrants for its members’ arrests. Five people were detained on Wednesday, state news media reported.
If the president hoped to leave Egypt in search of a friendlier audience, he did not find it in Germany. Mr. Morsi was asked repeatedly over the course of several appearances — at least five times by his count — about anti-Semitic statements he had made in 2010 in which he spoke of nurturing “our children and our grandchildren on hatred” of Jews and called Zionists “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”
In his first public response since the comments surfaced, Mr. Morsi said that they had been taken out of context and that he was “not against Judaism as a religion” but had been condemning Israeli attacks on Palestinians.
“Children in Egypt grow up watching blood being shed,” he said before speaking at length about events that he said he had witnessed as a teenager when Israeli airstrikes killed Egyptian civilians at a school and a factory. Mr. Morsi did not apologize for the slurs.
In Berlin, Mr. Morsi also met with the economic minister, Philipp Rösler, and representatives of German businesses. Germany is Egypt’s third most important trading partner, and Mr. Morsi is relying on investment and aid from Germany to rescue the teetering Egyptian economy.
Ms. Merkel made it clear that Berlin would continue its support of Egypt’s transition to democracy only if Mr. Morsi’s government upheld certain ideals. “One thing that is important for us is that the channels of dialogue are always open,” she said.
On Wednesday, Mr. ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat who is the coordinator of the National Salvation Front, said the group was calling for a dialogue with the government, reversing its refusal to sit down with Mr. Morsi.
In a Twitter post, Mr. ElBaradei called for a meeting with the president and the defense and interior ministers — highlighting the perception that Mr. Morsi did not speak for central pillars of the sprawling Egyptian bureaucracy. Mr. ElBaradei also asked that members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, and ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis join the talks.
“Stopping the violence is the priority,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote, adding conditions for the talks that included a commitment to a new cabinet and the creation of a committee to amend Egypt’s recently ratified Constitution.
In a sign of the ways that the crisis is redrawing Egypt’s political landscape, Al Nour, the Salafi party, announced that it was joining the call for a unity government. The Salafis, considered the strongest political force in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood, have fractured politically in recent months, creating a crack in the Islamist front that dominated the last parliamentary elections.
In announcing a tentative agreement with the secular opposition groups, Al Nour’s leader, Younis Makhyoun, seemed to endorse further erosion of the Brotherhood’s political supremacy. Among other aims, the tentative agreement called for “prohibiting the domination of a single faction over political life.”
Kareem Fahim reported from Cairo, Nicholas Kulish from Berlin, and Alan Cowell from London. Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.
