Egypt military spokesman: Reports on halting 'Operation Sinai' are false

ecurity operations in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, dubbed 'Operation Sinai,' remain ongoing, a military spokesman has announced. said in a statement. Colonel Ahmed Mohamed Ali, official military spokesman for the Egyptian Armed Forces, released the statement on his official Facebook page Sunday. Ali asserted that the Egyptian military was continuing the operation in Sinai in coordination with the interior ministry, stressing that there were no plans to negotiate with the "armed and criminal forces" that were working against "security and stability" in the restless peninsula. Ali told Al-Ahram's Arabic-language news website that the military was conducting land, air and marine operations to protect the Egyptian border, in addition to working with police forces to secure vital locations situated in the strategically important region. Ali also declared that the operation, launched in the wake of a cross border attack last August by unknown assailants, had recently achieved "several objectives and positive results." This, according to Ali, paved the way for a "comprehensive development operation" in the peninsula to be carried out with the support of the Armed Forces and the people of Sinai. Ali also called on media outlets to "abide by professional standards... and seek accuracy and truth when publishing news that might negatively affect the security operation in Sinai." Several websites and TV channels had earlier reported that Operation Sinai had been halted. Independent daily Al-Youm 7 published a report on Thursday claiming that President Mohamed Morsi has asked that operations be halted and negotiations be launched. The report, in which information was attributed to an anonymous source, asserted that the operation had been decelerated and that security procedures in Sinai were "normal." According to this source, the pursuit of "armed terrorist forces" and house searches had stopped in preparation for the launch of negotiations as requested by Morsi, who, the paper reported, had called for combating terrorism with "intellect rather than weapons." The source, according to Al-Youm 7, attributed the move to the fact that the core of the problem in Sinai was "a security one and not a military one." The source added that this was mainly the responsibility of the interior ministry, since the military's heavy weaponry could not work efficiently with civil elements and within residential areas. However, the source also pointed out that the police were "weak" in Sinai and could not combat the armed groups that have smuggled advanced weapons across the borders. In addition, the source, according to Al-Youm 7, said that destroying tunnels in Sinai was still taking place, "even though it incurs very expensive costs to the armed forces." On another note, Defence Minister Abd El-Fatah El-Sisi met on Saturday with a number of tribal leaders in Sinai to discuss El-Sisi's "ownership prohibition" decision that forbids the owning or renting of any land or property in "strategic locations of military importance" in Sinai. The decision included all lands located within five kilometres of Egypt's eastern borders. This has raised concerns by foreign and local businessmen who have invested in projects in the peninsula. From Ahramonline