Egypt’s Presidency To Hold Talks With Salafist Nour Party
Presidential media advisor Ahmed El-Muslimany is expected to meet with the Salafist Nour Party as part of the recent discussions the Egyptian presidency has been holding with different political groups.
El-Muslimany, who met with Nasserist Party head Sameh Ashour on Saturday, is expected to meet with the Nour Party leadership on Wednesday.
Younis Makhioun, the president of the Nour Party, said on Monday that the party will present its vision for ending Egypt’s current political crisis at the meeting on Wednesday.
The party’s solution includes ending violence, upholding the rule of law and respecting human rights, Makhioun said.
The proposal also includes a commitment to democracy for those who don’t practice violence.
Nader Bakkar, Nour Party spokesperson, said to Al-Ahram’s Arabic news website that there are many demands that will be presented during the meeting with El-Muslimany, and that the group would also raise a reconciliation initiative proposed by Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Bahaa El-Din last week.
Bahaa El-Din presented his proposal to the cabinet on Wednesday.
The initiative calls for the rejection of violence, as well as the rejection of the exclusion of any political or ideological forces in Egypt, as long as these groups abide by the law.
Furthermore, it calls for moving forward with the roadmap assumed by the government to hold a referendum on constitutional amendments followed by parliamentary and presidential elections.
The Nour Party, the second largest Islamist party in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, was the only Islamist group to openly support the army’s removal of Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi from power in July amid mass protests against him across the country.
Following his ouster, the party opposed a proposition for Mohamed ElBaradei to be prime minister, later accepting him as a vice-president for foreign affairs. ElBaradei resigned from the post following police deadly crackdown on pro-Morsi protest camps in mid-August.
On Sunday, the Nour Party said it had decided to participate in the 50-member committee tasked with amending to the country’s temporarily suspended 2012 constitution, saying it wants to defend “articles of identity which constitute a true representation of the Egyptian people,” referring to articles that deal with Islamic law in the constitution.
El-Muslimany has also met with former presidential contender Amr Moussa, and El-Sayed El-Badawi, head of the liberal Wafd Party.
Source : Ahram
