{{Egypt’s new military-backed cabinet made clear on Saturday it wanted to play an assertive role in regional politics, urging Ethiopia to attend talks over a dam on the Nile and stressing it sought change in Syria.}}<\/p>\n
“Egypt’s leadership is inevitable,” said Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy, a member of an interim government sworn into office just four days ago following the ousting of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi on July 3.<\/p>\n
Fahmy, a former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, put forward a similar array of priorities to Mursi, albeit with a different tone, stressing that the ongoing domestic upheavals would not undermine Egypt’s international clout.<\/p>\n
“I seek to activate Egypt’s international role, especially on issues related to national security and regain Egypt’s Arab and regional status,” he said.<\/p>\n
Under Mursi, Egypt took an increasingly strident stance against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is battling rebel forces seeking to oust him from power.<\/p>\n
Mursi said last month that he backed a no-fly zone over Syria and had cut all diplomatic ties with Damascus. Fahmy told reporters this decision was under review, but said the interim cabinet still wanted change in Syria.<\/p>\n
“We support the Syrian people and their aspirations for freedom,” he said, adding that he would meet Ahmad Jarba, the head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, on Sunday.<\/p>\n
However, Fahmy firmly distanced himself from Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which last month joined a call by Sunni clerics for a jihad, or holy war, against Assad and his Shi’ite allies.<\/p>\n
“There are no intentions for jihad in Syria,” he said.<\/p>\n
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{{Egypt’s new military-backed cabinet made clear on Saturday it wanted to play an assertive role in regional politics, urging Ethiopia to attend talks over a dam on the Nile and stressing it sought change in Syria.}} “Egypt’s leadership is inevitable,” said Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy, a member of an interim government sworn into office just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9217"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9217"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}