CAIRO, (Reuters) – The first senior U.S. official to visit Egypt since the army toppled the country’s elected president will hold high-level talks today in Cairo, where thousands of supporters of the ousted Islamist leader are expected to take to the streets.
Egyptians have been shocked by violent protests in which 92 people have been killed. However, despite deep divisions between those who supported and those who opposed overthrown President Mohamed Mursi, they are united by their suspicion of Washington’s motives.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns may face awkward questions when he visits Cairo, where portraits of the American ambassador, Anne Patterson, have been overwritten with the words “Go home, witch.” Burns, an Arabic speaker, would not miss the point.
His visit will include talks with the military and comes as Egypt’s interim prime minister finalises his cabinet.
It has been given the task of implementing a military-backed plan to hold parliamentary elections in about six months’ time and to return Egypt to civilian rule. The army toppled Mursi on July 3 when millions took to the streets to demand he resign.
The move sparked outrage among followers of Mursi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, and street battles between them and his opponents swept the country on July 5 leaving 35 dead.
A week ago, 53 Mursi supporters were killed by soldiers at the Republican Guard compound in Cairo in a clash the army blamed on an attack on its troops by demonstrators, but which Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement called a “massacre”.
Four soldier also died in the clash. Subsequent protests by the Brotherhood have mobilised tens of thousands to take to the streets, but they have passed off peacefully.
Islamist militants in Egypt’s lawless North Sinai province, bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip, have called for people to rise up against the army. A series of attacks in the area have claimed at least 13 lives, mainly security personnel, since July 3.
In the latest assault, suspected militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a bus carrying workers from a cement factory in the Sinai city of El Arish, killing three and wounding 17, security and medical sources said.
ALARM OVERSEAS
The crisis in the Arab world’s most populous state, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and which straddles the strategic Suez Canal waterway, has alarmed allies in the region and the West.
In a statement, the U.S. State Department said Burns would “underscore U.S. support for the Egyptian people, an end to all violence, and a transition leading to an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government.”
The United States has studiously avoided calling Mursi’s overthrow a coup, because, under U.S. laws dating back to the 1980s, to do so would mean stopping the $1.3 billion in military aid it gives Egypt each year.
The Brotherhood said it was a coup, but the head of Egypt’s armed forces, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, said the military was enforcing the will of the people after huge crowds took to the streets on June 30 to pressure Mursi into stepping down.
