People's Assembly rejects foreign intervention in Egypt's internal affairs

The People's Assembly has categorically rejected interference in Egypt's internal affairs by the US international religious freedom committee or any other committee.

People's Assembly Speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour said at a meeting held by the assembly Saturday that no one in the United States would accept setting up a committee to review human rights in the United States.

Minister of People's Assembly and Shura Council Affairs kamal AL Shazly said that the Egyptian people, Muslims and Copts, strongly reject any interference in Egypt's internal affairs. The government rejects this trend.

Shazly said the USIRFC is not a US government or congress committee but it is concerned with religious freedoms in the world at large.

In a report in 2000, the US Committee expressed concern over religious freedom in some world countries in which Egypt was not included.

The committee is now on a tour of the area that includes Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Israel.

The aim of its visit to Egypt is not to conduct any investigation or inspect religious freedom conditions and, consequently, there is no suspicion of interference in Egypt's internal affairs. Such interference is totally rejected.

Shazly said that Egypt has nothing to hide. Egypt is above any allusions which some try to include in this respect.

Messages have been sent to organizations similar to the USIFRC stressing that religious freedom is respected in Egypt in compliance with the constitution and law at the official and popular levels.

Shazly said the members of the US committee acquainted themselves with the position as regards the Coptic Church in Egypt.

Coptic Patriarch Shenouda III denied what was published in the United States about conditions of Copts in Egypt.

Shazly pointed out the President Hosni Mubarak had stressed Egypt's rejection of any interference in its internal affairs.

The USIFRC should not only convey a true picture of all what it has witnessed in Egypt and should not also overlook what is taking place in other countries as regards non-respect of human rights.

He mentioned that President Mubarak had lauded the rejection of any interference in Egypt's internal Affairs by both Muslims and Christians.

All in Egypt live under the motto: Religion for God, and the Country for All.

Fakhri Abdel Nour, Speaker of the Parliamentary Body of the opposition Wafd Party, said in an urgent statement that Copts rejected the visit of the USIFRC to Egypt.

He stressed that the government respects religious freedom and he considered the visit of the USIFRC a flagrant interference in Egypt's internal affairs and a violation of Egypt's sovereignty.

"It has been a constant principle of our policy to reject any foreign interference since 1928," he said.

"In there are problems or concerns, they are Egyptian problems and concerns and should be tackled within an Egyptian framework," he said.