Leading liberal Egyptian politician Mohamed ElBaradei is to be named prime minister of a new caretaker government, his supporters say.
Mohamed ElBaradei
Mena state news agency says he met interim President Adly Mahmud Mansour, three days after the army removed Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi amid growing nationwide unrest.
The move has in turn triggered mass unrest by supporters of Mr Morsi.
Mr ElBaradei is a former head of the UN nuclear watchdog.
He and other party leaders attended a meeting called by Mr Mansour on Saturday.
Mr ElBaradei leads an alliance of liberal and left-wing parties, the National Salvation Front.
A spokesman for the front told AP news agency that Mr Mansour would swear him in as prime minister on Saturday evening.
In a BBC interview on Thursday, Mr ElBaradei defended the army’s intervention, saying: “We were between a rock and a hard place.”
“It is a painful measure, nobody wanted that,” he said. “But Mr Morsi unfortunately undermined his own legitimacy by declaring himself a few months ago as a pharaoh and then we got into a fist fight, and not a democratic process.”
More than 30 people died and hundreds were wounded in Friday’s protests by Islamist supporters of the deposed president.
Huge crowds have demonstrated again in Cairo on Saturday to demand his reinstatement.
Meanwhile opponents of Mr Morsi have called for demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood, to which he belongs, on Sunday.
He is in detention, along with some senior Brotherhood figures.
Agencies
