Egypt army chief meets Islamist leaders over crisis

Amid diplomatic push by the US and the EU to resolve Egypt crisis, the country's army chief Abdel Fatah El Sisi held a five-hour meeting with an Islamist delegation to find an end to the current political impasse over the ouster of Mohammed Morsi.
Sisi "met with several representatives of the Islamist movements ... And stressed that there are opportunities for a peaceful solution to the crisis provided all sides reject violence," army spokesman Colonel Ahmed Aly said in a statement today, without specifying who his interlocutors were.
In the meeting El-Sisi asked all parties to reject violence and not to "obstruct public facilities or affect people's interests," the spokesman detailed on his official Facebook page.

El-Sisi also said that everyone should accept the roadmap the military enacted for a transition to a new government.
Salafist preacher Mohamed Hassan confirmed that he and several Islamist figures met with El-Sisi and members of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to bring forward demands of the forces protesting the military's removal of Morsi.
He claimed that El-Sisi promised not to forcibly disperse the sit-ins and to help set the scene for national reconciliation. Hassan claimed that in exchange El-Sisi demanded that leaders at Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Al-Nahda sit-ins tone down their speech and that the sit-ins remain peaceful and not spill out onto the streets.

According to Hassan, the five-hour meeting included Brotherhood consultative council member Abd El-Rahman El-Barr; leading member of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Ayman Abd El-Ghany; leading member of the Salafist Building and Development Party Safwat Abd El-Ghany and other alliance members.

The alliance made three clear main demands. Firstly, they demanded "an end to bloodshed," and that the sit-ins in Cairo not to be "forcibly dispersed."
The group also called for serious national reconciliation that would start with tackling media "that is propagating hate speech and deepening divides in society." Lastly, they demanded that all those arrested since Morsi's ouster on July 3 be released and all charges against them dropped.

Secret negotiations have reportedly started between Egyptian state bodies and the Brotherhood to avoid an escalation in Egypt's current political crisis, al Ahram reported.