CAIRO: Egypt on Wednesday rejected as misinformed calls from the European Union presidency urging Cairo to end its state of emergency and denouncing its use against pro-reform demonstrators. The foreign ministry has received with surprise and dismay the declaration issued by the EU presidency, said a statement received by AFP. The statement issued on Monday in Vienna by reigning EU president Austria contains several anomalies and misinformation about the demonstrations, the foreign ministry said. The EU believes the arrest last week of some 260 people in Cairo during a demonstration in support of two reformist judges stemmed at least partly from the state of emergency law. The two judges, Mahmud Mekki and Hisham El-Bastawisy, risk being axed for naming pro-government colleagues suspected of helping to rig last year s parliamentary poll which saw the ruling party retain a tight grip on power. Egypt totally rejects any interference in its internal affairs or any value judgment on an internal issue related to the Egyptian judiciary, the foreign ministry said. Egypt has a transparent homegrown program for reform with a specific timeframe, and it is not for any partner to try to run the Egyptian reform program at its volition, it added.
The European Union urges the Egyptian authorities to limit the application of the law on the state of emergency to cases of terrorism and to end the state of emergency as soon as possible, Vienna had said in a statement.
The EU said it hoped Egypt would not again extend the Emergency Law beyond 2008, noting that President Hosni Mubarak had promised in 2005 to repeal the measures and ensure they were used only to combat terrorism, not target the political opposition.
The European Union calls on the Egyptian government to allow civil society activists and other political forces to express themselves freely, to permit peaceful demonstrations and freedom of assembly and to maintain public order by transparent and proportionate legal procedure, the statement said.
Egypt s parliament last month approved the renewal of the state of emergency for two years, a measure authorities justified by citing a recent wave of bombings and communal clashes. AFP
