CAIRO - The State-backed National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) Monday reiterated opposition to foreign monitoring of Sunday's legislative elections as confrontations between police and Islamist candidates continued in several provinces across Egypt. "Egypt is a well-established democracy that will never accept foreign monitoring of elections," Moqbel Chaker, the deputy chief of the NCHR, told a joint press conference with ambassadors of the European Union countries in Cairo. He added that the council had trained more than 7,000 local monitors to follow up transparency, fairness and neutrality of the vote. Ambassadors of EU countries, including the head of the delegation of the European Union Commission in Egypt Marc Franco, attended the conference at the Operation Room set up by the NCHR to monitor the hotly contested polls. "Monitoring the polls is a national task. It's a matter of conscience," said Makram Mohamed Ahmed, the head of the Election Operation Room affiliated to the NCHR. Ahmed, who also chairs the independent Press Syndicate, added that the local monitors would report all violations that might occur during the election process. Representatives of the European Union countries will be allowed to visit the Election Operation Room on Election Day to follow up on the process, according to Ahmed. Meanwhile, Margaret Scobey, the US ambassador to Cairo, reiterated her country's interest in transparent Egyptian parliamentary elections. "The US is still committed to supporting fair, free elections in Cairo," Scobey told the official Middle East News Agency (MENA). Scobey echoed previous calls for the implementation of credible and impartial mechanisms to review poll-related complaints. She also stressed the importance of local election monitors working to international standards, accompanied by foreign monitors. The US request, however, was again dismissed by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who contended that Egypt was able to independently and transparently manage the polling. "We will prove to the world that we are able to manage an unbiased, neutral and fair election," Nazif said. A senior lawmaker from the banned Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, said the widespread crackdown and arrest of its members in the run-up to the polls meant there would be 'no election' in Egypt. "The regime is sending a message that there will be no election," said Saad el- Qatatni, an MP who runs in the upcoming polls, at a press conference at the group's parliamentary headquarters in Cairo Monday. In the last few days, processions and campaigning rallies for the group's candidates across the country have turned into bloody clashes with police. Members of the Brotherhood run as independents to skirt a decades-long ban on their group. El-Qatatni alleged that more than 1,200 of the Brotherhood members and sympathisers have been arrested. Police raided houses of the group's members in Alexandria and the Delta province of Sharkia where they made many arrests, according to sources inside the group. Minister of Interior Habib el-Adly sternly warned all candidates against violation of the rules set for campaigning, stressing that big rallies and demonstrations are not part of campaigns. "While holding rallies could turn into violent clashes between supporters of candidates, they are not included in the legal means of campaigning," el-Adly told a meeting of key security officials. He added that the police would never intervene in any way in the elections. "The police's job is only to keep security outside the polling stations in the country's 222 constituencies, which have more than 40,000 polling stations," he said. The London-based Amnesty International Saturday called on Egyptian authorities to refrain from harassing election candidates.
