The Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said that Qatar, Turkey, the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood are funding new online media projects that "aim to undermine Egypt's stability."
During a meeting held on Sunday with editors-in-chief of Egyptian national, partisan and private newspapers, the former defence minister warned against "powers that are currently working on using the Internet to bring down the nation by promoting subversive ideas via social networking sites," according to the state-run news agency MENA, whose editor-in-chief also attended the meeting with the president.
The meeting was held at the Ittihadiya presidential palace in Cairo.
These powers, "do not hesitate to spend tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions, on these websites in order to promote ideas that aim to undermine Egypt's stability," he added.
He mentioned names of new websites that he said are luring some with money by publishing their articles in return for large sums of money. Media Limited, Egypt Now (Masr Al-Aan) and Culture are among the websites pointed out by Sisi.
Al-Sisi, who was inaugurated on 8 June 2014 as president of Egypt, said that "the goal of these sites is to attract great minds and brilliant brains in Egypt and the Arab states to have them write material in return for lucrative financial compensation."
Answering a question about the funding of those media projects, Sisi said that "funding comes from Qatar, Turkey, the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood."
He called on Egyptians, especially the youth, to establish social networking websites to thwart the efforts of these websites that aim to destabilize Egypt and the greater Arab world, which is currently subjected to "an unprecedented conspiracy to break it up."
