Ammon News - By AL ARABIYA WITH AGENCIES
The Egyptian army has called on President Mohammed Mursi and oppositional groups, including youth movements, judges and journalists, to hold unity talks on Wednesday to stop a crisis over an imminent constitutional referendum from tearing the country apart.
The televised appeal by General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the country’s armed forces chief and defense minister, came late Tuesday, as rival camps of Mursi supporters and opponents brought tens of thousands of people out for separate mass rallies in Cairo.
The military has said it fears the Arab world’s most populous country is headed for a disastrous “dark tunnel” unless the two sides talk. It has warned it will not allow the situation to worsen.
Troops have orders to use police powers to protect state institutions until results are announced from the referendum, which is scheduled for Saturday.
The meeting scheduled for 1430 GMT was called in response to a wave of protests since President Mohamed Mursi awarded himself sweeping powers on Nov. 22 to push through a new constitution shaped by his Islamist allies, which is due to go to a referendum on Saturday.
“We will not speak about politics nor about the referendum. Tomorrow we will sit together as Egyptians,” Sissi said at the gathering of army and police officials.
The United States has urged Egypt’s military which it provides with billions of dollars each year “to exercise restraint, to respect the right of peaceful protest.”
Egypt’s main opposition group, the National Salvation Front, has so far rejected talks with Mursi and his Islamist camp unless the referendum is scrapped. But it said it was weighing the army’s appeal.
Mursi has previously declared himself ready to start dialogue with the Front but has said postponing the referendum is impossible.
Overnight, Islamists and the opposition brought out huge crowds for and against the plebiscite.
There was no immediate sign of any violence like that of last week, when clashes killed seven people and hurt hundreds outside Mursi’s presidential palace.
This time, thousands of anti-Mursi protesters tore down parts of a concrete and metal barricade that had been set up by soldiers near the palace.
They unfurled a banner calling for the fall of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and cried “Revolution!” but made no move to storm the presidential compound.
“I’m not scared of the army. I think their offer for dialogue is positive,” one protester, Aiman Khaled, 26 told AFP news agency.
A much bigger Islamist counter-demonstration a few kilometers (miles) away gathered tens of thousands of referendum supporters whose mood was equally determined.
“It’s the last battle for Islam against the secularists who want to ruin Egypt,” said demonstrator Ahmed Alaa, who was bussed in from the north of the country.
In his speech on state television, Sissi said the proposed meeting for Wednesday, in a military sports complex in northeast Cairo, aimed to bring all political actors, including Mursi and the opposition, together along with youth movements, judges and journalists.
It would not, he said, be a forum for structured political negotiations but rather an attempt to come up with some sort of entente “for the sake of Egypt.”
“We will not talk politics or the referendum. We will just sit together so that every Egyptian who is worried in their home is reassured,” the armed forces chief said. “You can have differences, but not quarrel.”
The opposition, made up of secular, leftwing and liberal groups, sees the draft constitution rushed through by an Islamist-dominated panel last month as weakening human rights, the rights of women and religious minorities.
Mursi’s supporters argue that it is up to Egypt’s voters to decide.
Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which propelled him to power in a June election, were expected to attend, while the main opposition coalition said it would decide on Wednesday morning whether to participate. The opposition stayed away from an earlier reconciliation meeting called by Mursi last weekend.
The judiciary committee overseeing the vote decided late on Tuesday that the referendum would be conducted on two days instead of one, as previously planned.
“The committee had officially asked the President to issue a law approving that the referendum takes place on two stages on Saturday Dec. 15 and Saturday Dec. 22,” Judge Mahmoud Abu Shousha, a member of the referendum judiciary committee, said. Voting for Egyptians living abroad starts on Wednesday.
“The reason for the splitting of the vote into two stages is due to a shortage of judges needed to supervise the ballot stations,” another member of the committee, who asked not to be named, said.
Many judges had decided in a joint meeting on Tuesday to not supervise the vote on a constitution they say had divided the country into two groups.
Outside the presidential palace - where anti-Mursi protesters are demanding the Islamist postpone the vote on a constitution they say does not represent all Egyptians - there was skepticism tinged with some hope.
“Talks without the cancellation of the referendum - and a change to the constitution to make it a constitution for all Egyptians and not the Brotherhood - will lead to nothing and will be no more than a media show,” said Ahmed Hamdy, a 35-year-old office worker.
But the fact that the army was calling such talks “is an indication to all parties that the crisis is coming to a head and that they need to end it quickly,” he said.
Washington said there were “real and legitimate questions” about the referendum process.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said there were fears for “public order surrounding the polling”, but urged Egypt’s military to restraint.
The prolonged crisis, the worst since a popular uprising overthrew autocratic president Hosni Mubarak early last year, is intensifying uncertainty over Egypt’s economy.
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday put on hold a $4.8-billion loan Egypt has sought to fill budget gaps it will face in the 2013-2014 fiscal year. The IMF had been expected to review the loan, which would have come with budget-cutting requirements attached, this month for final approval.
Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil said: “We have officially requested the delay of a month in the negotiations with the IMF because of the political situation in the country.”
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