CAIRO - Egypt’s interim president on Tuesday named liberal economist Hazem al-Beblawi, a former finance minister, as the country’s new prime minister, presidential spokesman Ahmed al-Muslimani said.
Liberal opposition chief and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei was named vice president for foreign relations, Muslimani said.
Meanwhile, the interim leader vowed fresh elections by early next year as Islamists staged fresh rallies Tuesday after dozens of ousted president Mohamed Morsi’s loyalists died in clashes at a Cairo military barracks.
Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has led demonstrations against last week’s military overthrow of the Islamist leader, called for an “uprising” after accusing troops and police of “massacring” its supporters during dawn prayers on Monday.
“Each province is organising funerals and rallies (Tuesday), and each province will have a central sit-in,” Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad told AFP.
At the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, where Morsi supporters have been camping out for nearly two weeks, several thousand demonstrators, worn out by the heat, listened to speakers urging them to remain steadfast in their protest.
Amid the widening chasm in the restive country, interim president Adly Mansour issued a decree setting a timetable for a referendum on an amended constitution and then for parliamentary elections.
Mansour will form a panel of judicial experts to draft amendments to the suspended 2012 constitution within 15 days.
Once a draft is ready, it will go to a popular referendum, paving the way for parliamentary elections.
Mansour will announce the date for presidential elections after the new parliament convenes, according to the decree which was swiftly rejected by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Islamist group released the names of 42 people killed in the incident outside the elite Republican Guards’ headquarters, as the interior ministry and military said two policemen and a soldier were also killed.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the latest wave of bloodshed in Egypt, calling for an independent inquiry.
According to Mansour’s decree, a panel representing political, religious and security services will agree final amendments to the constitution suspended on Morsi’s ouster and put it to referendum.
Parliamentary elections would be completed in less than three months after the constitution is ratified. A senior Muslim Brotherhood official denounced the decree. “A constitutional decree by a man appointed by putschists... brings the country back to square one,” said Essam al-Erian in a Facebook posting.
Meanwhile, Israel has urged Washington not to suspend its annual $1.3 billion in aid to Cairo in the wake of the ouster of Mohamed Morsi by the military, press reports said on Tuesday.
Under US law, all military and economic aid must be suspended to any country where the government is overthrown by the military, although Washington has not yet determined whether it considers the June 30 removal of Morsi was actually a coup - a claim made by the Muslim Brotherhood, to which the ousted president belongs.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned US Secretary of State John Kerry, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon spoke with Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and Israel’s National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror consulted with his US counterpart, Susan Rice, he said.
The United Arab Emirates has agreed to grant Egypt $1 billion and lend it another $2 billion, an Egyptian source said on Tuesday, throwing it a financial lifeline after the army ousted the country’s Islamist president last week.
The source also said Saudi Arabia may lend Egypt another $2 billion, which he expected to be confirmed within two days. Egypt’s finances have been devastated by political and economic instability since the popular uprising that pushed Hosni Mubarak out of the presidency two and a half years ago.