EU niet rouwig om afzetting Egyptische president Morsi (en) - Hoofdinhoud

BRUSSELS - The EU on Wednesday (3 July) tacitly approved the Egyptian army's defenestration of President Mohamed Morsi amid mass civil unrest.

The bloc's foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, in a statement published shortly after soldiers placed Morsi and his top people under house arrest, said the Union "remains unequivocally committed to supporting the Egyptian people in their aspirations to democracy and inclusive governance."

She urged the country to "rapidly" hold new elections.

She also said the new government must be "fully inclusive and ... ensur[e] full respect for fundamental rights, freedoms and the rule of law."

Earlier the same evening, as the dramatic events in Egypt were still unfolding, the Lithuanian EU presidency, speaking to MEPs in Strasbourg on Ashton's behalf, reeled off a list of Morsi's past sins.

Its EU affairs minister, Vytautas Leskevicius, said the Islamist leader was guilty of creating a "political stalemate" with secularist opponents, of arresting NGO activists, and of mismanaging day-to-day issues such as electricity and food supplies.

"Many people are feeling worse off than they were before 2011 [when Morsi came to power]," Leskevicius said.

MEPs from the left and the right of the assembly also voiced sympathy with the millions of Egyptians who took the streets in recent days calling for Morsi to step down.

Spanish centre-right deputy Jose Ignacio Salafranca said "the voice of the people has to be listened to."

Dutch Liberal Marietje Schaake i said Morsi had "lost legitimacy" in a "power grab" which went beyond the abuses of his predecessor, pro-Western dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Belgian Socialist Veronique de Keyser i noted that while Morsi had been elected in a free and fair vote, his Muslim Brotherhood party ran the country's economy into the ground and put in place an Islamist constitution which did not respect the rights of all Egyptian people.

An EU source told EUobserver: "It's one thing to be democratically elected, but it's another thing when you have several million people against you out on the street."

He added that the Egyptian security forces, whose leaders date from the Mubarak era, are primarily concerned "about the safety and security of the country, about making sure it doesn't descend into civil war."

EU institutions kept up to date with events via contacts with the Cairo-based Arab League's Crisis Room.

The crisis centre, created with EU support last year, monitors open sources in Arab media and physically overlooks Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital, the epicentre of the anti-Morsi demonstrations.

Some of Ashton's people also have inside contacts with Egyptian military and intelligence structures.

But the EU source noted that Europe, at this stage in the new process, has little say on how things evolve.

"It's a very Egyptian thing," he said.

With the Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt, but which has chapters in several Arab countries, denouncing the takeover as a "coup d'etat," the developments risk inflaming tensions between Islamists and secularists across the region.

"Egypt is a symbol of the Arab world and what happens in this crisis will have wider repercussions … It is a country which we cannot abandon," Salafranca noted in the EU parliament.

"It's not about taking sides with this or that group. Ultimately, it's only the Egyptians who can determine the future path of the country," Leskevicius said.