Tawadros II denies telling Kuwaiti TV that Sisi must run for president

The Coptic pope has denied saying that Defense Minister Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has a “national duty” to run for president.

In comments made “exclusively” to the privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper, Pope Tawadros II said he had not made any statements or given any interviews in the past 10 days to two weeks.

The highest Coptic authority in Egypt allegedly made the remarks during an interview with Kuwaiti television on Saturday. The interview was transcribed and published in the Kuwaiti paper Al-Watan on Sunday, and was widely reported in the Egyptian press.

In the same interview, Tawadros II also allegedly described the uprisings that swept across the Middle East in 2011 as motivated by “evil intentions” that had left the region in an “Arab winter.”

He also allegedly accused the West of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and of failing to respond adequately to the rampant attacks on churches in the aftermath of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi’s fall from power.