EL-BARADEI: WHAT HAPPENED IN EGYPT A COUP

Brussels, 22 Dhul Qa’ida 1434/28 September 2013 (MINA) – Egyptian media are reporting that former interim Vice Prime Minister Mohamed El-Baradei has described the events in Egypt on 30 June as a “military coup”. El-Baradei’s statement came during his meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

According to the media reports, Dr El-Baradei told the European foreign ministers that he had a plan to disperse the Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins at the Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nahda Squares in a peaceful manner, through political dialogue; however, the army and the police instead harried to disperse the sit-ins by force, MEMO reports.

Dr Ahmed Darraj, the former chairman of the Constitution Party, said that “Dr El-Baradei would not dare to describe what happened in Egypt on 30 June as a ‘military coup’,” explaining that El-Baradei is a member of the National Salvation Front, and thus he knows very well that what happened on 30 June is a “public movement”. Darraj said, “I believe that El-Baradei’s description of 30 June is incorrect”

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Meanwhile, Khaled Daoud, the spokesman of the Constitution Party, refused to comment on El-Baradei’s statement, saying, “I have no information about that.” Daoud added that, “El-Baradei had asserted to us his commitment to the principles of the revolution in order to achieve democracy.”

Meanwhile, Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, claimed that Israel was behind the military takeover in Egypt last month.

In remarks broadcast on Turkish television, Mr. Erdogan scolded Western democracies for failing to condemn the military coup that deposed Egypt’s elected, Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, and blamed Israeli influence. “What do they say in Egypt? ‘Democracy is not the ballot box,’” he said. “Who is behind this? Israel.”

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Telling his listeners, “We have evidence,” Mr. Erdogan cited comments made two years ago by the Algerian-born French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who “is also Jewish,” as supposed proof of a longstanding Israeli plot to deny the Muslim Brotherhood power in Egypt, even if it won elections.(T/P01)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)