Egypt's military softens tone, vows to transfer power to new president

An Egyptian supporter of Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi celebrates his apparent victory Monday in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Egypt's ruling military council pledged Monday to honor its promise to hand over power to the newly elected president. (Manu Brabo, The Associated Press)

CAIRO???Faced with the election of the first Islamist head of state in the Arab world, Egypt's ruling generals sought Monday to soften the appearance of their supreme authority as they entered a period of negotiations with the prospective president over the balance of power.

In a two-hour news conference, members of the ruling military council made no reference to the election results, which by early morning showed that Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood had defeated Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force general and Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, in the runoff to choose Egypt's first democratically elected president.

The ballots were counted in front of television cameras and party observers across the country to prevent fraud. Independent observers concluded that Morsi had won by a margin of about 4 percentage points, or about 1 million votes.

The election officials will not formally confirm the results until later this week, however, and Ahmed Sarhan, a spokesman for Shafiq, insisted Monday that the general was the true winner and the Brotherhood had "terrorized" voters. He offered no evidence.

The ruling generals had stunned Egyptians on the eve of the vote by dissolving the Brotherhood-dominated Parliament and claiming all legislative power for themselves in an apparent attempt to foreclose the possibility that Islamists could control both the presidency and the legislature.

The power grab erased their promise to turn over all power to elected civilians by the end of this month, and liberals and Islamists denounced the move as a military coup. The court ruling dispirited Brotherhood supporters, energized Shafiq's backers and led many Egyptians to expect that either the psychological effect of the takeover or more direct intervention would push Shafiq to the presidency.

In the aftermath of Morsi's victory ? considered an upset by many, despite the Brotherhood's proven popularity and political clout ? the generals sought Monday to reassure the public that they had no intention of re-establishing a military-backed autocracy, although they did not back away from their effective seizure of legislative power.

"Trust the armed forces," two representatives of the military council, Gen. Mandouh Shahin and Gen. Mohamed el Assar, repeated many times during the news conference.

"We don't want power," both also said repeatedly, citing the presidential election as proof of their good intentions.

Despite their seizure of Parliament, they promised a grand celebration at the end of the month to mark their formal handover to the new president.

On the question of a permanent constitution, state media reported Sunday night that the generals had picked their own 100-member panel to draft a permanent charter, casting aside the similar panel picked by Parliament. The generals said Monday that those reports were premature.

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