New Egypt govt gets down to work

CAIRO: Egypt’s new government got down to work Wednesday faced with a raft of daunting challenges including restoring security, as angry loyalists of ousted President Muhammad Mursi rallied against the caretaker administration.
More than 1,000 demonstrators gathered just a few hundred meters from the Cabinet headquarters, near Cairo’s Tahrir Square, shouting anti-government slogans and waving banners, an AFP photographer reported.
The protests reached their peak after the iftar time. The demonstration came as EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton began a series of meetings in Cairo with Egypt’s new leaders, including interim President Adly Mansour and Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei.
Spokesman Michael Mann described Ashton’s meeting with Mansour as “good and useful.”
In the talks, Ashton said the EU wanted “a quick return to the democratic process, and a full inclusive process,” Mann told AFP. Ashton had also stressed the need to get the economy going “as quickly as possible.” Diplomatic sources said she was expected to meet members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party later on Wednesday. The Brotherhood along with the Salafists’ Al-Nur party has refused to take part in the new administration.
Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad rejected as illegitimate the 34-member Cabinet sworn in on Tuesday, in which army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, the general behind the popularly backed coup that overthrew Mursi on July 3, was appointed first deputy prime minister and minister of defense.
“We don’t recognize its legitimacy or its authority,” he told AFP.
Political analyst Samer Shehata said among the pressing issues for the new government are Egypt’s budget deficit, reforming the Interior Ministry, establishing the rule of law and restoring security in Sinai. The restive peninsula has suffered a wave of attacks, with six soldiers and two civilians wounded late on Tuesday when militants fired at an army checkpoint in the border town of Rafah, according to security sources.
“How to deal with the protesters on the street at the moment is another very serious issue,” said Shehata.
The swearing-in ceremony of Egypt’s caretaker government, which includes three women and three Coptic Christians, took place just hours after deadly overnight clashes between the security forces and Mursi’s supporters in Cairo.
Officials said seven people were killed and 261 wounded in the clashes.
The latest deaths bring to more than 100 the number of people killed, according to an AFP tally, since the coup that plunged Egypt into violence.
Hundreds of protesters were also arrested, bringing to more than 1,000 the number of Mursi supporters detained in Cairo alone since the military coup.