Egypt's interim prime minister says he will unveil a Cabinet on Wednesday featuring a new finance minister and about a dozen incumbent ministers who will be tasked with governing the country until the end of phased parliamentary elections in March.
In a news conference Tuesday, Kamal el-Ganzouri said his new finance minister will be Mumtaz al-Saeed, a ministry veteran who faces the challenge of stabilizing an economy battered by unrest since February's ouster of autocratic president Hosni Mubarak.
The military-appointed interim prime minister said he would not reveal his choice for the key post of interior minister until Wednesday's announcement of the full Cabinet line-up. Many opposition youth activists have been calling for the replacement of the incumbent interior minister Mansour al-Eissawy with a civilian who does not share Eissawy's police background.
Many Egyptians resent the interior ministry for ordering police to violently crack down on opposition protesters who forced Mr. Mubarak to step down in February and who demonstrated last month against the military council that replaced him.
Egypt's military rulers said Tuesday they will amend the constitution to give Mr. Ganzouri more power than his predecessor Essam Sharaf, whom they appointed in March. Sharaf quit after 42 people were killed in November's confrontations between police and protesters.
But, the military council said it will retain its presidential powers over the armed forces and the judiciary.
Speaking Tuesday, Mr. Ganzouri said he will not allow security forces to use violence against any citizens, including youth activists who have been protesting his appointment outside the cabinet headquarters in Cairo. The activists oppose Mr. Ganzouri because of his ties to the Mubarak government, in which he served as prime minister in the 1990s.
In other developments, voting ended Tuesday in parliamentary runoff elections in nine Egyptian provinces, including the two largest cities of Cairo and Alexandria. Almost half of the 52 individual seats at stake in the runoffs were being contested by Egypt's two main Islamist groups: the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party and the ultra-conservative Salafist Nour party.
Both Islamist parties won a big majority of party-list votes in the nine provinces in the first round of voting last week, leaving Egypt's liberal coalition a distant third in the race for seats in the 498-member lower house of parliament. Results from the runoff elections for individual seats were expected by Thursday.
Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie said Tuesday his movement will work together with the country's military rulers if it wins the parliamentary elections. He was speaking on the private Al-Mehwar television station.
Egypt's remaining 18 provinces will join the voting for the lower house of parliament in two stages in the coming weeks. Elections for parliament's less-powerful upper house will begin in late January and finish in March.
