US Congress Urged to Condemn Egypt Church Attack
WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Key US Senator Robert Menendez has filed a resolution condemning the deadly attack committed against a Coptic Christian church on New Year's Day in Alexandria, Egypt. The resolution introduced Tuesday urges the Egyptian government "to fully investigate the bomb attack and to lawfully prosecute the perpetrators of this heinous act." Threatening to exacerbate tensions between Muslims and Egypt's minority Christians, a suicide bomber killed 23 people, Egyptian authorities said, outside a church in the northern city of Alexandria after a New Year's Eve mass at the start of 2011. The resolution, which could be adopted later Thursday or in the coming days, asks that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his government "enhance security for the Coptic Christian community" and ensure "religious freedom and equality of treatment for all people in Egypt." Menendez, a member of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has support for his resolution from many fellow Democrats, as well as some Republicans. "I hope that this tragedy will serve as a wake-up call for President Mubarak to remedy the ongoing legal and social disparities faced by Coptic Christians in Egypt," Menendez said in his statement. The senator from the northeast state of New Jersey added that "the current demonstrations in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez have encapsulated the public demand for broad democratic reforms, which I hope will start with free and fair presidential elections later this year." No on has claimed responsibility for the attack, which came after an Al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq threatened Egypt's Copts after saying it carried out a deadly October assault on a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad. Mubarak has vowed to catch those responsible, and has called it a foreign "terrorist operation." Egypt's Christian community comprises 10 percent of the country's population of 80 million. Meanwhile, Mubarak's regime has been challenged since Tuesday by unprecedented protests that have resulted in seven deaths and more than 1,000 arrests. A similar resolution could be put forward in the US House of Representatives.