CAIRO – Arab League chief Amr Mussa on Sunday said he plans to run for president in his native Egypt after a popular uprising that toppled veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak, the official MENA agency reported. “I intend to run in the next presidential election, and an (official) announcement will be made at the right time,” MENA quoted him as saying.
Mussa said a new Egyptian figure would be picked very soon to head the 22-member pan-Arab organisation. The Arab League secretary general’s name has often been mentioned as a potential new leader of Egypt. As nationwide protests raged to demand Mubarak’s ouster, Mussa said he had no objection to running for president in the Arab world’s most populous country.
“I am of course at the service of my country… I am ready to serve as a citizen who has the right to be a candidate,” he told France’s Europe 1 radio before making an appearance at Tahrir Square.
