(Reuters) – Supporters of ousted President Mohamed Mursi stayed behind their barricades at two camps in Cairo on Tuesday while Egypt’s interim leaders debated how to end their protests.
No police crackdown appeared imminent despite frequent warnings from the military-installed government that the protesters should pack up and leave peacefully.
The head of Egypt’s second largest Islamist group, the Nour party, meanwhile said Al Azhar, a leading religious authority, would host a meeting “very soon” bringing together people who have tabled initiatives for ending the political crisis.
The two main protest camps at Cairo’s al-Nahda Square and around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque have become the focus of the power struggle since Mursi’s overthrow by the military on July 3.
Thousands of his supporters have gathered, denouncing the toppling of Egypt’s first freely elected leader and saying they will stay until he is freed from detention and reinstated.
That poses a problem for the government as it presses on with its own plan for elections in nine months.
Some officials wish to avoid a bloody showdown, which would damage the government’s efforts to present itself as legitimate, while hardliners in the army and security forces fear they are losing face to Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and want to move in.
More than 300 people have already died in political violence since the overthrow, including dozens of Mursi supporters killed by security forces in two separate incidents.
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The state-run al-Ahram newspaper reported that after a National Security Council meeting late on Monday, security forces were likely to cordon off the camps rather than take a more forceful approach that could lead to bloodshed.
“The consultations are continuing among all government bodies. The most probable path is to encircle the two sit-ins, to choke them instead of (launching) a security intervention that could cause casualties,” Al-Ahram reported.
A senior security source told Al-Ahram that security forces had not received any orders to break up the protests. Security had been bolstered around the camps to limit infiltration of weapons, he said.
International efforts to resolve the crisis collapsed last week. Foreign mediators say the Muslim Brotherhood must accept that Mursi will not now be returned to power.
At the same time, the new authorities must bring the Brotherhood back into the political process, they say.
Mursi took office in June 2012 after elections that followed the overthrow of long-ruling strongman Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising the previous year.
But he failed to get to grips with the country’s deep economic malaise and worried many Egyptians with apparent efforts to tighten Islamist rule of the most populous Arab nation. The army ousted him amid huge demonstrations against his rule. Mursi and other Brotherhood leaders are now in jail.
Nour Party head Younes Makhyoun told Reuters the Al-Azhar was moving ahead with efforts to find a solution to the turmoil and that Nour had been invited to talks.
“Currently the noble Al-Azhar is trying to bring together for discussions those who have drawn up initiatives to agree, for example, on one initiative and vision, which we will use to pressure all the parties, so they accept it.”
The effort, however was being complicated by friction between the Brotherhood and Al-Azhar, he said.
“We are striving to find a way out of this crisis but the problem is the Muslim Brotherhood rejects the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, viewing him as a party to the problem.”
The Nour Party has called for a political solution. It has tabled an initiative that offers the Brotherhood a legal fig leaf to give ground by allowing Mursi to sign over his presidential powers to a mutually acceptable prime minister.
(Reporting by Tom Perry; Writing by Angus MacSwam; Editing by Andrew Heavens)