Foreign secretary says 'political reality' dictates that UK maintain ties, because Britain 'recognises states not governments'
William Hague has condemned the intervention by the military in Egypt, where the armed forces have toppled Mohamed Morsi's government and suspended Egypt's constitution, but said the UK will recognise the new administration.
The foreign secretary said on Thursday that "political reality" dictated that the UK maintain ties with the new regime and insisted that the UK "recognises states not governments".
"We don't support military intervention as a way to resolve disputes in a democratic system," the foreign secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "If one president can be deposed by the military then of course another one can be in the future. That's a dangerous thing."
But he also indicated that his sympathy for Morsi and his Freedom and Justice party (the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood) may be limited, as he acknowledged the anger at the government that brought millions of Egyptians on to the streets, prompting the intervention by the military.
"It's a popular intervention, there's no doubt about that," the foreign secretary said. "We have to recognise the enormous dissatisfaction in Egypt with what the president had done and the conduct of the government over the past year."
Morsi has been arrested and is being held by the army at the defence ministry, while his aides are being detained at the republican guard barracks, according to a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman.
It has also been reported that 300 arrest warrants have been issued for Brotherhood members. There has been a crackdown on media reporting with at least four television stations that were covering the growing demonstrations of Brotherhood supporters shut down. They included the al-Jazeera offshoot al-Jazeera Misr, which was raided and its journalists arrested.
The Foreign Office has advised against all but essential travel to Egypt except for resorts on the Red Sea in South Sinai and those resorts on the Egyptian mainland in Red Sea governorate. Hague said the presence of UK citizens and businesses in Egypt made it imperative that ties were not severed.
"The important thing is for political leaders and others in Egypt to work together in a way they have not done over the past year," he said.
Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said the toppled Egyptian government had failed to deliver stability, but added: "We don't support coups; we support democracy."
Speaking on LBC's Call Clegg phone-in, he said: "We want to see a return to peaceful democratic government in Egypt as rapidly as possible." His remarks underline the unease in British government circles about the role of the army in toppling Morsi, but also his failure to unify the country.
"Hopefully we will look back on this as a very, very painful phase of change for a country not accustomed to democracy and the democratic transfer of power from one government to the next," Clegg said. "Morsi had a democratic mandate but a very worrying degree of instability and chaos ensued on the streets of Cairo."
He said "the cruel dilemma" for Egypt was that democracy had not delivered stability, adding that he supported democracy being administered in a stable way, not in a way that led to chaos on the streets.
"Democracy is about learning to disagree peacefully and that is not happening in Egypt."
Other world leaders have also expressed concern about events in Egypt but refrained from describing it as a coup, including the US president, Barack Obama, who has ordered a review of US foreign aid to Egypt, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, Lady Ashton.