Baku-APA. Egypt's army-installed government said on Wednesday diplomatic efforts to resolve the political crisis had failed and signaled it was gearing to take action against supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi gathered at two protest camps in Cairo, APA reports quoting Reuters.
Envoys from the United States, European Union, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had been trying to defuse the crisis and prevent further bloodshed.
But President Adli Mansour's office said the period of international efforts, which began more than 10 days ago, had "ended today".
Soon after, interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said the government's decision to dismantle the protest camps was final and its patience had nearly expired.
The protesters had "broken all the limits of peacefulness", Beblawi said, accusing them of inciting violence, blocking roads and detaining citizens.
Any use of weapons against policemen or citizens would "be confronted with utmost force and decisiveness," he said.
The breakdown in mediation efforts and the threat of action against the protesters brought the political crisis in the Arab world's biggest nation to a dangerous new phase.
"I didn't know it was this bad. These folks are just days or weeks away from all-out bloodshed," U.S. senator Lindsey Graham told the CBS network after he met officials from both sides in Cairo on Tuesday.
Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad, asked about threat against the protest camps, told Reuters: "This means they are preparing for an even bigger massacre. They should be sending us positive signals, not live bullets."
However, any action could still be some time away.
The country celebrates the Eid el-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadam from Thursday to Sunday, an inauspicious time for any act of violence.
And Egypt's leading Islamic authority on Wednesday announced plans to host talks on the crisis after Eid, which might also forestall an assault by the security forces.
"There are some initiatives that can be built upon to start national reconciliation," an al-Azhar official told the state news agency MENA.
READY TO RESIST
The army ousted the Islamist Mursi, Egypt's first freely-elected leader, on July 3 after huge street demonstrations against his rule and installed an interim civilian government.
Mursi and leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood have been rounded up and detained. But thousands of their supporters have demonstrated to demand his reinstatement.
Almost 300 people have been killed in political violence since the overthrow, including 80 Mursi supporters shot dead by security forces in a single incident on July 27.
On Wednesday afternoon, people streamed into the camp outside Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in northeast Cairo, where demonstrators have built brick and sandbag barricades and armed themselves with sticks and rocks. Their numbers included many women and children.
"We will not leave until we get Mursi back," said Salma Imam, 19, student at Al-Azhar university. "It's not a government, the real government was chosen by the Egyptian people one year ago. This is not a legal government."
Prime Minister Beblawi said in his address people should leave the camps now. Those whose hands were not "sullied with blood" would not face legal action, he said.
The presidency said it held the Muslim Brotherhood completely responsible for the failure of the diplomatic push, and also for any events that might result from this "related to breaches of the law and endangering civil peace".
The international envoys had shuttled between the two sides for more than a week seeking to find a compromise.
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