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Egypt’s President Mursi to visit India in March

Feb 8, 2013

New Delhi: Egyptian Prsident Mohamed Mursi, the country’s first democratically elected president, will visit India in the third week of March.

Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, Secretary (Economic Relations) of the external affairs ministry, announced it at a conference today.

“India has actively engaged with the new governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. President Mursi of Egypt will be visiting India in March,” Chakravarty said while addressing a conference on ‘The Maghreb and India” organised by the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), a think tank, and the India International Centre here.

Reuters

Reuters

Mursi, who is backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, will be visiting in the third week of March. However, details of the visit have not yet been worked out or the number of days he would be staying, an external affairs ministry official told reporters.

Mursi’s visit comes at a time when Egypt has again been rocked by clashes and massive street protests by people demanding his removal for some of his allegedly authoritarian moves. Dozens of people have been killed, leading Morsi to impose state of emergency in three provinces.

The opposition accuses Mursi of betraying the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak two years ago and for distorting the constitution, but Morsi has reassured the opposition that there was no going back on “freedom and democracy”.

IANS

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