A number of delegations from Egypt's Constituent Assembly – tasked with drafting a new national charter – will travel to six different countries to discuss a draft constitution with Egyptian expatriate communities abroad, Abdel-Fattah Khattab, rapporteur for the assembly's recommendations committee, announced on Sunday.
The largest delegation, which will include over four assembly members, will head to the United States, which boasts one of the world's largest Egyptian expat communities. A two-member delegation, meanwhile, will head to Saudi Arabia, the largest Egyptian constituency abroad.
Additional delegations will also be dispatched to the UK, France, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
Reform campaigner Ayman Nour, head of Egypt's Ghad Al-Thawra Party, will be among those travelling to the US, while leading Freedom and Justice Party member and former MP Mohamed El-Beltagi will be part of the delegation visiting Saudi Arabia.
Khattab said that Egyptian communities overseas would bear the travel costs for delegation members, stressing that the leaders of more than one Egyptian expatriate community had contacted Constituent Assembly officials to request the meetings.
The delegations will each stay in their respective host countries for a one-week period, which have yet to be announced.
Following last year's revolution, a group of Egyptians living abroad – along with several local Egyptian rights organisations – filed a lawsuit to demand the right to vote in Egyptian elections and referendums. Last October, a court ruled in their favour, allowing Egyptians residing overseas to cast ballots in national polls for the first time.
Meanwhile, Egypt's troubled Constituent Assembly still faces the risk of being dissolved by court order in September on grounds that it was drawn up by the now-dissolved People's Assembly, the lower house of Egypt's parliament.
