Mursi vows to be president for all Egyptians

CAIRO: Muhammad Mursi paid tribute on Friday to Egypt’s Muslims and Christians alike and symbolically swore himself in as the country’s first elected civilian president before a huge crowd at Tahrir Square.
Crowds had thronged the square from early in the day ahead of the president-elect’s appearance on the eve of his official swearing-in.
Mursi, who won a run-off election earlier this month, was received with applause by the tens of thousands of people gathered in the birthplace of the revolt that overthrew his predecessor Hosni Mubarak last year.
He promised a “civilian state” and praised “the square of the revolution, the square of freedom,” in what he called an address to “the free world, Arabs, Muslims... the Muslims of Egypt, Christians of Egypt.”
Mursi symbolically swore himself in before the crowd, saying: “I swear to preserve the republican system... and to preserve the independence” of Egypt.
In his speech Mursi, whose election has raised concerns among Egypt’s sizeable Coptic Christian community, served the United States with advance warning that his politics will be markedly different from those of his ousted predecessor.
He told the Tahrir crowd he would work to secure freedom for Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed for life over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
“I will do everything in my power to secure freedom for... detainees, including Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman,” Mursi said in his address to the throng packing the hub of the 2011 revolution.
Abdul Rahman was convicted in 1995 for his role in the World Trade Center bombing, plotting to bomb other New York targets including the United Nations, and a plan to assassinate Mubarak.
After taking the oath, Mursi will have to contend with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, headed by Mubarak’s longtime defense minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, that will retain broad powers after it formally transfers power.
The liberal Wafd newspaper reported that Tantawi will remain defense minister in the new government.