MORSI ABANDONED BY SIX MINISTERS IN HIS CABINET

       Cairo, 24 Sha’ban 1434/3 July 2013 (MINA) – President Mohamed Morsi and his opponents given deadline to end political stalemate, on the other hand Mursi left by six ministers in his cabinet.

      They were the tourism minister, Hisham Zaazou; communication and IT minister Atef Helmi; the minister for legal and parliamentary affairs, Hatem Bagato; water minister Abdel Qawy Khalifa; and environment minister Khaled Abdel-Aal.

     A sixth, the foreign minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, recently has also tendered his resignation, according to Aljazeera report quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

      Morsi faces huge pressure to resign from his position, and a warning from the military that politicians must resolve the crisis or face the army’s transitional “roadmap”.

       Morsi also lost the support of Sami Enan, his military adviser, who resigned on Monday and said the army would not “abandon the will of the people.”

       Thousands of the president’s supporters have been staging their own sit-in since Friday in Cairo’s Nasr City neighbourhood. They are defending the president’s legitimacy, they say, and argue that the only way to remove the democratically-elected Morsi is through the ballot box.

       In a speech to pro-Morsi protesters on Monday night, Mohamed el-Beltagy, a leading member of the Brotherhood, warned that the group would only “on our dead bodies” accept the president’s ouster – which he called an “armed coup”.

       Morsi’s office in a statement early on Tuesday morning said the president was not aware of the ultimatum before it was issued and insisted that he was working to reconcile the country’s political factions and resolve the crisis. (T/P05/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)