EU urges Egypt rulers to end stand-off with Brotherhood

(Reuters) - Europe's top diplomat pressed Egypt's rulers on Monday to step back from a growing confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Mursi, two days after 80 of his supporters were gunned down in Cairo.

Raising the prospect of more bloodshed, the Muslim Brotherhood said it would march again on Monday evening on Interior Ministry offices across the country.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief, became the first overseas envoy to visit Egypt since Saturday's carnage, the second mass killing of Mursi supporters by security forces since the army ousted him on July 3.

The bloodshed has raised global anxiety that the army may move to crush the Brotherhood, a movement which emerged from decades in the shadows to win power in elections after Egypt's 2011 Arab Spring uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

Ashton, on her second trip to Egypt since Mursi's fall, met General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the army and the man behind the overthrow of Egypt's first freely-elected president. She also held talks with deputy interim president and prominent liberal politician Mohamed ElBaradei and interim Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy.

There were no immediate details on the talks. Earlier, Ashton said she would press for a "fully inclusive transition process, taking in all political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood".

In comments carried by the MENA state news agency, ElBaradei said he had told Ashton that the new leadership was doing all in its power to "reach a peaceful way out of the current crisis, that preserves the blood of all Egyptians".

Ashton was also meeting members of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political wing. Thousands of its supporters have camped out for a month at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in northern Cairo, demanding Mursi's reinstatement and defying threats by the army-backed authorities to remove them.

"It's very simple, we are not going anywhere," Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said before the meeting with Ashton. "We are going to increase the protest and multiply the sit-ins," he told Reuters. "Someone has to put sense into this leadership."

Ashton's leverage is limited. The United States is Egypt's chief Western backer and source of $1.3 billion in military aid, though the EU is the biggest civilian aid donor to the country, the Arab world's most populous and a strategic bridge between the Middle East and North Africa.

The EU has attempted to mediate in the political crisis over the past six months as Egyptians have grown increasingly suspicious of U.S. involvement.

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Mursi has been in detention since he was ousted and the military-backed interim government has placed him under investigation on charges that include murder.

The handling of his case by the military suggests it believes it has the support of a big majority of Egyptians. They turned out in huge numbers to protest against the Islamist leader before the army moved against him.
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