Mohammed Morsi rejects judicial call

EGYPT'S President Mohammed Morsi struck an uncompromising stand yesterday over his seizure of near-absolute powers, refusing in a meeting with top judicial authorities to rescind a package of constitutional amendments that placed his edicts above oversight by the courts.

Mr Morsi's supporters, meanwhile, cancelled a massive rally planned overnight to compete with a demonstration by his opponents, citing the need to "defuse tension", according to a spokesman for the President's Muslim Brotherhood.

The opposition rally was expected to go ahead at Cairo's Tahrir Square, birthplace of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak's regime nearly two years ago.

The meeting between Mr Morsi and members of the Supreme Judicial Council was a bid to resolve a crisis that has plunged the country into a new round of turmoil, with clashes that have left one protester dead and hundreds wounded.

Mr Morsi, according to a presidential statement, told the judges that while his constitutional declaration last week granted him immunity from any oversight, he intended to restrict that to "sovereignty issues".

The vaguely worded statement did not define those issues, but they were widely interpreted to cover declaration of war, imposition of martial law, breaking diplomatic relations with a foreign nation or dismissing a cabinet.

The statement did not touch on the protection from oversight that Mr Morsi has extended to two bodies dominated by his Brotherhood and other Islamists: the 100-member constituent assembly and parliament's mostly toothless upper chamber, the Shura Council.

The council does not have law-making authority, but in the absence of the more powerful lower chamber, the People's Assembly, it is the only popularly elected body where the Brotherhood and other Islamists have a majority. The lower house was dissolved by a court ruling in June.

The judiciary has pushed back, calling the decrees a power grab and an "assault" on its independence. Judges and prosecutors stayed away from many courts in Cairo and elsewhere this week.

A spokesman, Yasser Ali, said Mr Morsi told the judges he acted within his rights as the nation's sole source of legislation, assuring them the decrees were temporary and did not in any way infringe on the judiciary.

Two rights lawyers, Gamal Eid and Ahmed Ragheb, dismissed Mr Ali's remarks. Mr Ragheb said they amounted to playing with words. "This is not what Egyptians are objecting to and protesting about," he said. "If the President wanted to resolve the crisis there should be an amendment to his constitutional declaration."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr to "register American concerns about Egypt's political situation", said a spokeswoman. The US wanted to "see the constitutional process move forward in a way that does not overly concentrate power in one set of hand