CAIRO (Reuters) – Hundreds of people chanted anti-US and anti-Islamist slogans outside Hillary Clinton’s hotel on Saturday as the US secretary of state urged Egypt’s military and Muslim Brotherhood to complete a transition to full democratic rule.
Clinton met Egypt’s newly-elected Islamist President Mohamed Mursi on Saturday and was to see military chief Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi today, two of the central players in the power struggle playing out in the country.
After a more than one-hour meeting with Mursi, Clinton made clear Washington wants Egypt’s political players to reach some consensus that would lead to genuine democracy, with the military returning to a purely national security role. But she stressed it was up to the Egyptians themselves to decide how to achieve this, sorting out such questions as what kind of a constitution to draft and when and whether to hold new parliamentary elections. “Democracy is hard,” Clinton told a news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr. “It requires dialogue and compromise and real politics.”
Clinton got a taste of democracy in action when protesters, most of them backers of the old regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, a long-time US ally toppled by popular protests last year, demonstrated outside her five star hotel. “Get out Hillary,” they chanted. “We don’t want the Muslim Brotherhood.” Among the signs held up were “America: Support Liberty Not Theocracy” and “Egypt Majority is not Islamist.”
Clinton is the most senior US official to meet Mursi, an Islamist who emerged from the country’s long-oppressed Muslim Brotherhood movement to be inaugurated as president two weeks ago, after what was regarded as the country’s first relatively free and fair presidential election.
The army, in power for six decades, moved to limit the power of the new civilian president even as voters were lining up to elect him.
During last month’s two-day run-off election, generals dissolved parliament and issued a decree restricting the president’s powers. Mursi quickly asserted his own authority, issuing a decree summoning the disbanded, Islamist-led parliament just days after he took office.
The lawmakers met on Tuesday. Judges, seen as allies of the generals, responded by rebuking Mursi.
The result has been a power struggle in a country that is of strategic importance to the United States because of the Suez Canal, a vital conduit for trade and for US military vessels, and because of its peace treaty with Israel.
