Morsi to explain decree to top judges

Mohamed Morsi's office says the Egyptian leader's order making his rule above court review is temporary, as Morsi was to meet with the nation's top judges. The president's office insisted Morsi was forced to assert the expansive new powers, which set off violent protests, to protect the process of writing the country's new Constitution. It said the decree, issued Thursday, would be lifted once the charter was in place. "The presidency reiterates the temporary nature of those measures, which are not intended to concentrate power, but to avoid ... attempts to undermine democratically elected bodies and preserve the impartiality of the judiciary," Morsi's office said. Morsi was to meet Monday with the Supreme Council of the Judiciary, the highest council overseeing the Egyptian courts, to explain the scope of his decree, known as a constitutional declaration, a presidential spokesman said. Egyptian Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki, an independent Cabinet minister, met with the jurists Sunday seeking to broker a deal, state television reported. After the meeting, the council urged Morsi to scale back his writ, The New York Times reported. Mekki, a close Morsi aide, also went on television to urge Morsi to narrow the decree's scope so it would no longer place all the president's future edicts above judicial scrutiny -- the provision that provoked the greatest outcry. He said the decree should be limited only to functions of the Constitution-writing Constituent Assembly and the upper house of Parliament. "I believe it is the duty of the president" to limit the decree's scope, Mekki told state TV. As written, the decree "violates my core convictions," he said. Many Egyptian courthouses were closed Sunday after the nation's judges went on strike, Egyptian state media said. The Egyptian stock market's key stock index fell 9.6 percent Sunday, erasing more than $4 billion of value. More than 1,000 activists clashed with riot police in and around Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 and brought Morsi to power. More than 500 people were reported injured. Some rocks had landed in the U.S. Embassy compound near the square, the embassy said, adding it didn't think it was the target. Still, it urged embassy personnel to remain indoors and warned U.S. citizens against going to the embassy. A 15-year-old Muslim Brotherhood supporter was killed in a clash in a brotherhood political Freedom & Justice Party office in Damanhour, 100 miles northwest of Cairo and 40 miles east-southeast of Alexandria in the western Nile Delta, the party said. Scores of others were injured, security officials said. The office was one of many party offices burned or looted Sunday, the party said. Party spokesman Nader Omran told the Times he blamed the attacks on an organized conspiracy. Opposition groups called for a million-strong gathering in Tahrir Square Tuesday. The Brotherhood, which initially called for a similar rally Tuesday in nearby Abdeen Square, next to the Morsi's principal workplace, changed the venue Sunday to a public space farther from the square to avoid clashes with Morsi opponents.