Head of the Arab and Foreign Relations Committee at the Shura Council (the Upper House of the Egyptian Parliament) Moustafa el-Feqqi said on Tuesday that Egypt was planning to launch a new raft of reforms, after “having achieved economic reforms over the past years”. He gave no specific details about these reforms. El-Feqqi told a visiting delegation from the US Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs that a deadly New Year's Eve bombing outside a church in the coastal city of Alexandria “targeted both Muslims and Christian Copts, as a terrorist, and not a sectarian incident, as some may like to view it”. Referring to recent legislative elections in Egypt, el-Feqqi said they obviously exposed “claims related to the inability of Islamists” to win seats in the new legislature. The Muslim Brotherhood, a banned opposition group that fields its candidates, emerged empty-handed in the first round of the elections and quit the second round citing massive vote fraud.
