President Morsi tries to end military rule

In an attempt to ease the turmoil which has shadowed Egypt for 16 months, freshly-elected President Mohammed Morsi reached out to women, Christians and secular revolutionaries, hoping they would join the Islamist-led government.

Morsi was cautiously supported for his efforts to end military rule even by opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood after a series of rushed decrees were issued by the military to continue grappling on to power.

The only way forward, according to a Morsi campaign spokeswoman, was to create a national unit government representing all political forces and Egyptians but it remained unclear how much power the military was willing yield or how much authority was to be retained by the Brotherhood.

The spokeswoman said that no single party could take full responsibility for the country's problems after having been engulfed in corruption for such a lengthened period of time.

She said a Christian and a woman were to be appointed by Morsi as vice presidents while also including a range of political sectors in the Cabinet.

Morsi became the first Islamist and first civilian to hold office and has since been involved in meetings with the ruling military council to negotiate power-sharing agreements between the two parties.