India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged the Egyptian military leadership to surrender its political powers, according to a report. Shortly before she met the military council's chief, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Clinton praised the generals for not following the Syrian army's example of 'murdering their own people'. According to the Telegraph, she broached the subject of Egypt's power struggle between its generals and new President Mohammad Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood by declaring that she looked forward to 'the military's return to a surely national security role'. "Democracy is hard. It requires dialogue and compromise and real politics," the paper quoted her, as saying. "We are encouraged and we want to be helpful. But we know that it is not for the United States to decide; it is for the Egyptian people to decide," she added. According to the paper, Clinton 's encouragement did not appear to yield immediate results as General Tantawi raised the stakes in his standoff with Morsi by declaring that he would never allow the Muslim Brotherhood to dominate Egypt.

Clinton urges Egypt's military to 'surrender political powers, return to national security role'