EU deputies slam Egypt over rights despite Cairo threats
European Union lawmakers adopted Thursday a resolution criticising Egypt's human rights record, as Cairo threatened to sever ties with the assembly and summoned EU ambassadors to complain. In a sparsely attended session, belying the importance of a public admonition that had turned into a diplomatic incident, 52 of the 59 deputies present voted in favour of the text, while the seven others abstained. Before the vote, which came at the end of a plenary week after many of the more than 780 deputies had already left Strasbourg, parliamentary leaders vowed not to cave in to Egyptian pressure. "The European Parliament is sovereign and decides what it wants to decide," Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit told AFP in Strasbourg.
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