Summoned by one of Egypt’s most authoritative Muslim scholars, the country’s rival political groups held extraordinary talks Thursday after days of political chaos threatening the transition to democracy, and urged continued dialogue to counter the violence.But, a statement after the gathering of prominent secular opponents of President Mohamed Morsi along with the Egyptian leader’s Islamist allies made no direct reference to a call on Wednesday by some of Mr. Morsi’s critics for the creation of a government of national unity.
The talks were held under the chairmanship of the country’s leading Muslim cleric, the Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb of Al Azhar mosque and university, one of the highest seats of learning in the Muslim world.
A national dialogue, the cleric said, “ in which all the components of the Egyptian society participate without any exclusion” was “ the only means to resolve any problems or disagreements.”
He urged the participants to “commit to peaceful competition for power and the peaceful rotation of power” and to prohibit and outlaw “all types of violence and coercion to achieve goals, demands and policies.”
Television footage from the highly unusual encounter showed some of the country’s main political rivals sitting down across a table, news reports said.
Facing dire warnings from the military about the country’s growing chaos, Egyptian opposition leaders from both secular and Islamist groups banded together for the first time on Wednesday to urge President Morsi to form a national unity government as a way to halt the violence that has led to dozens of deaths over the past week.
Those who attended the talks on Thursday included Mohamed ElBaradei, a former United Nations diplomat and prominent figure in the secular opposition, and Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister in the Mubarak era and onetime head of the Arab League.
Unusually, the gathering also brought together leading Islamists including Saad al-Katatni, the head of Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with Islamist and Christian figures.
But even before the gathering, Mr. Morsi rejected the idea of unity government during a visit to Germany, where he said a new administration would be formed only after parliamentary elections in April.
“In Egypt there is a stable government working day and night in the interest of all Egyptians,” Mr. Morsi said after meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
Still, the opposition’s gamble offered the first recent indication that the nation’s political leaders were searching for common ground and a way out of the chaos. Egypt’s largest secular-leaning opposition bloc, the National Salvation Front, joined a hard-line Islamist group, the Nour party, which had been allied with the president and his movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in calling for a new government.
The political maneuvers came a day after Egypt’s defense chief warned of “the collapse of the state” if the country’s quarreling political forces did not reconcile. The statement, by Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, was a stark reminder that Mr. Morsi’s authority had been weakened after days of protests led him to declare a state of emergency in three cities along the Suez Canal when the police lost control.
Egyptians have reacted with growing frustration to the political feuding in Cairo, the sense of lawlessness and the deteriorating economy. Many have warned that the standoff — between a weak and often intractable opposition movement and the Muslim Brotherhood, which has grown increasingly dismissive of its critics — could lead to even worse political violence. Days of street clashes have intensified those fears.
As he left for Germany, Mr. Morsi abruptly backed down from some of the emergency measures he had imposed — and which the public had already ignored — saying that he would leave it to the provincial authorities to set their own curfews. On Wednesday, all three cities on the Suez Canal reduced curfews to just a few hours early in the morning.
The visit to Germany further highlighted Mr. Morsi’s troubles. The president, who had scheduled the visit before the protests started, was forced to cut it short, and he canceled a trip to France. At several public appearances, Mr. Morsi appeared defensive while describing the situation in Egypt. He attributed much of the violence to remnants of Egypt’s deposed government, or so-called infiltrators, including a little-known group that the Egyptian authorities have turned into a scapegoat and called a national security threat.
On Tuesday, Egypt’s public prosecutor declared that the group, which calls itself the Black Bloc, was a terrorist organization and issued warrants for its members’ arrests. Five people were detained on Wednesday, state news media reported.
If the president hoped to leave Egypt in search of a friendlier audience, he did not find it in Germany. Mr. Morsi was asked repeatedly over the course of several appearances — at least five times by his count — about anti-Semitic statements he had made in 2010 in which he spoke of nurturing “our children and our grandchildren on hatred” of Jews and called Zionists “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”
In his first public response since the comments surfaced, Mr. Morsi said that they had been taken out of context and that he was “not against Judaism as a religion” but had been condemning Israeli attacks on Palestinians.
“Children in Egypt grow up watching blood being shed,” he said before speaking at length about events that he said he had witnessed as a teenager when Israeli airstrikes killed Egyptian civilians at a school and a factory. Mr. Morsi did not apologize for the slurs.
In Berlin, Mr. Morsi also met with the economic minister, Philipp Rösler, and representatives of German businesses. Germany is Egypt’s third most important trading partner, and Mr. Morsi is relying on investment and aid from Germany to rescue the teetering Egyptian economy.
Ms. Merkel made it clear that Berlin would continue its support of Egypt’s transition to democracy only if Mr. Morsi’s government upheld certain ideals. “One thing that is important for us is that the channels of dialogue are always open,” she said.
On Wednesday, Mr. ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat who is the coordinator of the National Salvation Front, said the group was calling for a dialogue with the government, reversing its refusal to sit down with Mr. Morsi.
In a Twitter post, Mr. ElBaradei called for a meeting with the president and the defense and interior ministers — highlighting the perception that Mr. Morsi did not speak for central pillars of the sprawling Egyptian bureaucracy. Mr. ElBaradei also asked that members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, and ultraconservative Islamists known as Salafis join the talks.
“Stopping the violence is the priority,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote, adding conditions for the talks that included a commitment to a new cabinet and the creation of a committee to amend Egypt’s recently ratified Constitution.
In a sign of the ways that the crisis is redrawing Egypt’s political landscape, Al Nour, the Salafi party, announced that it was joining the call for a unity government. The Salafis, considered the strongest political force in Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood, have fractured politically in recent months, creating a crack in the Islamist front that dominated the last parliamentary elections.
In announcing a tentative agreement with the secular opposition groups, Al Nour’s leader, Younis Makhyoun, seemed to endorse further erosion of the Brotherhood’s political supremacy. Among other aims, the tentative agreement called for “prohibiting the domination of a single faction over political life.”
