XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: maroons@barackobama.com   
      
   CAIRO, EGYPT — Former Egyptian army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sissi   
   secured a landslide victory in the country's presidential vote   
   last week, the election commission confirmed on Tuesday.   
      
   Egypt's election commission says Tuesday that Sissi took nearly   
   97 percent of the vote in last week's race.   
      
   Turnout was about 47 percent of Egypt's 54 million voters, the   
   commission said - less than the 40 million votes, or 80 percent   
   of the electorate, that Sissi had called for.   
      
   Meanwhile, Egypt has invited Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to   
   the inauguration ceremony of newly elected Sissi, a trip that   
   would make him only the second Iranian leader to visit Egypt   
   since the countries severed ties in 1980.   
      
   Sissi, the former army chief who last year toppled Egypt's first   
   freely elected leader, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, is expected   
   to be sworn in as president later this week after official   
   results showed he won a landslide victory in last month's   
   election.   
      
   Iran welcomed the 2011 uprising that led to the downfall of   
   autocratic President Hosni Mubarak, and considered it an   
   "Islamic awakening" given that it was followed by Islamist rule.   
      
   When the army ousted Morsi from power in July last year, Tehran   
   criticized the move, drawing a hostile response from Cairo.   
      
   "He was invited in both capacities as president of Iran and   
   president of the Non-Aligned Movement," Egypt's presidential   
   spokesman Ehab Badawi told Reuters, but said that so far there   
   had been no response.   
      
   Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said that Egypt's   
   representative in Tehran met with Rouhani's chief of staff,   
   Mohammad Nahavandian, and handed him the official invitation   
   from interim President Adly Mansour.   
      
   Under Morsi, ties between the two countries seemed to improve,   
   with the then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad becoming the   
   first Iranian leader to visit Egypt in more than three decades.   
   He called for a strategic alliance with Egypt and offered Cairo   
   a loan to ease a deepening economic crisis.   
      
   Rouhani, a relative moderate who took power in 2013, has pledged   
   to improve relations with Tehran's regional neighbors.   
      
   Iran and Egypt cut formal diplomatic relations in 1980 after   
   Tehran was angered by Egypt's admission of the deposed Shah of   
   Iran and Egypt's recognition of Israel.   
      
   One persistent obstacle to improving relations has been Tehran   
   naming a street after the Egyptian Islamist militant who led the   
   1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat after he signed a   
   peace treaty with Israel.   
      
   http://www.voanews.com/content/egypts-sissi-won-97-percent-iran-   
   invited-to-his-inauguration/1928587.html   
      
       
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)