Conflict between Egypt’s president, military gets hotter
Conflict between Egypt’s president, military gets hotter
CAIRO — The faceoff between Egypt’s new Islamist president and the old-guard military sharpened Tuesday, with parliament defying orders to disband and the highest court slapping back at Mohammed Morsi in what has become an early glimpse into how he may flex his power.
Morsi’s rapid-fire moves against Egypt’s entrenched institutions show he is willing to push back against the establishment left over from the era of deposed President Hosni Mubarak.
But — so far at least — he and his Muslim Brotherhood allies have also displayed restraint and appear intent on avoiding a collision course during a sensitive transition period.
It could point to a complicated and protracted shake-out between Morsi and Egypt’s security and judicial power centers, as all sides test the limits of their powers while the country awaits its post-Arab Spring constitution — not expected before the end of the year.
In place of an all-out confrontation, Egypt may be witnessing the new rules of political engagement being defined in a time of highly unclear guidelines: tough statements, conflicting orders and attempts to push the envelope but not tear it up.
“One of them came through the ballot box and the other is trying to monopolize power,” Gamal Eid, a prominent rights lawyer said of Morsi and the generals.
Obama targets GOP foe’s private finances
WASHINGTON — The Obama election campaign has a politically loaded question it wants voters to think about: What is Mitt Romney hiding?
Not a thing, Romney says. The Democrats are just trying to change the subject from the weak economy.
It’s a newly intense back-and-forth as President Barack Obama’s campaign team tries to cast his Republican opponent as a secretive rich guy who keeps his money in offshore accounts and refuses to release more of his tax returns.
The coordinated push, which includes stinging criticism from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, web videos and television advertisements, comes as the Democrats grasp for ways to gain an advantage in a closely contested election and overcome a steady stream of lackluster economic news.
Getting personal, Biden declared Tuesday that Romney was “making a lie of the old adage, like father, like son” by not meeting the standards his father, George Romney, set when he released 12 years of tax returns during his 1968 presidential bid.
Annan presses his peace plan for Syria
BAGHDAD — The U.N.’s special envoy on the Syrian crisis sought to build support for his peace efforts Tuesday with the leaders of Iran and Iraq, saying President Bashar Assad has agreed to a plan to quell the bloodshed in the most violent areas of Syria and then expand the operation to the whole country.
Top diplomat Kofi Annan said at a news conference in Iran that the plan still must be presented to the Syrian opposition. But he said his talks with Assad a day earlier focused on a new approach to ending the violence, which activists say has killed more than 17,000 people since March 2011.
“(Assad) made a suggestion of building an approach from the ground up in some of the districts where we have extreme violence — to try and contain the violence in those districts and, step by step, build up and end the violence across the country,” Annan told reporters in Tehran, his first step on a tour of Syria’s allies. He did not elaborate on the plan.
Annan later visited Iraq and met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss ways to end the fighting.
“I think we’ve all watched the tragic situation in Syria, the killings, the suffering of the people,” Annan said in Baghdad. “And everyone I’ve spoken to shares the concerns and the needs for us to stop the killing.”
By wire sources