WarSclerotic

CAIRO – Mohamed ElBaradei, a former UN nuclear agency chief, will be named Egypt’s interim prime minister later on Saturday, a presidency source told Reuters.

Interim head of state Adli Mansour was installed on Thursday to oversee a military roadmap to elections, the day after the military overthrew Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Mansour later summoned ElBaradei back to the presidential palace, the state news agency reported, without giving more details.

ElBaradei was among liberal leaders who opposed Morsi and called for the massive protests that showed how the Muslim Brotherhood had angered millions of Egyptians.

The opposition leader, was favored to head a transitional government in Egypt, political and diplomatic sources said on Thursday.

The prime minister will be sworn in at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), state newspaper Al-Ahram reported, not naming who will be sworn in.

Mahmoud Badr, founder of the “Tamarud-Rebel!” movement that organized the mass anti-Morsi demonstrations, told Reuters that he had been informed by an aide to Mansour that ElBaradei had been selected.

Political sources have said ElBaradei would also be acceptable to Western governments that have been reluctant to call the removal of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood a military coup.

A senior official in the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, said on Saturday he rejected ElBaradei’s appointment.

“We reject this coup and all that results from it, including ElBaradei,” he said at an Islamist gathering in northern Cairo.

ElBaradei, 71, was mandated by the main alliance of liberal and left-wing parties, the National Salvation Front, and youth groups that led anti-Morsi protests as negotiator with the armed forces and was present when armed forces commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced the military takeover on Wednesday.

The Egyptian liberal opposition leader said on Wednesday that the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 had been relaunched by the announcement of an army-sponsored roadmap which removed Morsi.

Egypt’s armed forces overthrew Morsi on Wednesday and announced a political transition with the support of a wide range of political, religious and youth leaders.

An Islamist coalition led by the Muslim Brotherhood called on people to protest across Egypt on Sunday against the military overthrow of Morsi.

The National Coalition in Support of Legitimacy issued the statement on Saturday, a day after dozens of people were killed as Islamists opposed to Morsi’s overthrow took to the streets to vent their fury at what they say was a military coup.

Mansour, will act as Egypt’s interim head of state, assisted by an interim council and a technocratic government until new presidential and parliamentary elections are held.

The interim leader, installed to oversee a military roadmap to elections, held talks on Saturday with the army chief and political leaders on how to pull the country out of crisis as the death toll from Islamist protests over the army’s overthrow of Morsi rose to at least 35.

Gunmen shot dead a Coptic Christian priest in Egypt’s lawless Northern Sinai on Saturday in what could be the first sectarian attack since the military overthrow of Morsi, security sources said.

Also in the Sinai Peninsula, five Egyptian police officers were gunned down in separate incidents on Friday in the North Sinai town of El-Arish, medical sources said, after Islamist gunmen killed a soldier in a separate attack in a nearby town overnight.