Luxor4u

A minister from the European Community is meeting with the ex Government to discuss matters, just released on Sky News.

I think she is meeting the new government first.

Senior Egypt Brotherhood figures to meet EU's Ashton

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent ... Ashto.aspx

Baroness Ashton rules with a feather duster and represents no-one's foreign policy. However she and the EU have called several times for release of political detainees and have cautioned against the use of the courts for political purposes (which seems to imply that the EU thinks that this is going on) so her heart seems in the right place.

Surprisingly, the EU may have some influence at the moment because, unlike the US, they are seen as more even-handed (the US is now saying that the military have averted a civil war which tends to show where their loyalties lie).

Baroness Ashton has been more active in Egypt than supposed over the past few months. She has tried to broker two compromises between the FJP and the secularists, the last about 4 weeks before the coup.

Its consistent with the EU position that she would meet both sides on her recent trip and that the heavy hitting US Deputy Secretary of State should have not.

Good luck to her although the fact that the 2 sides loathe each other will make it hard. It must be very strange for a western democrat to work with groups so irrational, extreme and bent on total power. Coming from a polite democracy where religion is irrelevant and political behavior moderate you wonder how she deals with differences so outside her political experience. The slippery, subtle and svelte Blair diplomacy in the region has had no success for possibly the same reasons - the wrong skill set.