Egypt president seeks talks over parliament crisis

Egypt’s Islamist president said on Wednesday he wanted talks with the judiciary and political powers to defuse a crisis over him trying to reinstate parliament in defiance of generals who dissolved it last month based on a court ruling.Mohamed Mursi’s statement appeared to be a call for a truce to prevent the crisis, less than two weeks into his presidency, from boiling over into open confrontation with the military council or the judges in his battle to wrest power.It was the latest twist in a legal wrangle that masks a broader struggle for control of the Arab world’s biggest nation that pits Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood against a military that was in charge for six decades and an establishment still filled with officials from the era of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.“There will be consultations among all political forces, institutions and the supreme council of judicial authorities to find the best way out of this situation in order to overcome this stage together,” Mursi’s statement said.The saga began when the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled on June 14, shortly before Mursi was elected, that the Islamist-led lower house was void and the then-ruling army dissolved it. The president recalled parliament this week but was slapped down in another court ruling hours after it convened on Tuesday.Mursi’s move had risked a showdown with the army, long used to having their man in charge. Previous presidents had all been drawn from military ranks and had for most of the time since the king was ousted in 1952 repressed the 84-year-old Brotherhood.The United States, which hands Egypt’s army a $1.3 billion subsidy each year, had urged dialogue to end the row.