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Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian business tycoon Naguib Sawiris, who denies allegations by Al-Jazeera TV that he had fled the country. The interview aired on ON TV on January 30, 2011.
Crowds: Our soul and our blood we will give to you, oh Sawiris.
Our soul and our blood we will give to you, oh Sawiris.
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Sawiris suppporter: The Sawiris clan are real men. They did not flee the country. The Sawiris clan are here.
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Naguib Sawiris: I asked you to come over and film us, here in the El Gouna Resort, in Ghardaqa. You can see the people sitting here, happy, and nothing is going on. This [claim] is inappropriate. A reliable TV news channel [like Al-Jazeera] must not publish such an item. Before they aired this – if their intentions were good – they should have called me. They know my number.
It is a disgrace for this channel to air this. They seem to have a vested interest. From the day these events began, it seemed as if they were happy about them, and as if they were trying to fan the flames.
Yesterday, for example, they aired the news about the appointment of Vice-President General Omar Suleiman. One minute later, they said that the entire Egyptian public rejects him. Did you go to the street and conduct a referendum among the 80 million people, who said they didn’t want him?
We did not expect such gloating from our friends. You can see that none of us has run away, and whoever did flee can go to hell. They do not deserve to be Egyptians.
I have called them twice so far, and asked them to refute this, but so far I haven't seen such a refutation. I hope they will refute it.
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