Former Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, a stalwart of ousted president Hosni Mubarak's regime, could run for president in upcoming elections, local press reported on Monday.

"Omar Suleiman approaches the presidential battle," read the headline of the state-owned daily Al-Ahram, adding that his supporters would organize a march to his house to ask him to declare his candidacy officially.

Egyptian liberal MPs withdrew on Saturday from a crucial parliament vote for a panel to draft a new constitution amid a rift with Islamists over the constituent assembly's make up, liberals said.

The liberals accused the majority Islamists of trying to monopolize the 100-member panel, whose constitution will replace the one annulled by the ruling military after an uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak last year.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave the green light Friday to resume $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt despite fears it is slipping in its avowed transition to democracy.

The move marked the denouement of a crisis in the 30-year-old U.S.-Egyptian alliance that erupted over a crackdown in December on pro-democracy groups by Egypt's interim military rulers.

An Egyptian military court on Monday acquitted Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaida's leader Ayman, overturning a death sentence in a new trial, his lawyer and his son told Agence France Presse.

The court also acquitted Mohammed Islambouli, whose Islamist brother Khaled assassinated president Anwar Sadat in 1981, they said. They had been convicted of planning militant attacks.

Egyptian Bedouin in the Sinai kidnapped two Brazilian women tourists on Sunday in the third such abduction in the peninsula this year, security officials said.

The tourists were returning from a visit to the historic monastery of St Catherine in southern Sinai when the tribesmen seized them and an Egyptian tour guide, the officials said.

Thousands of grieving Coptic Christians packed St Mark's Cathedral in Cairo on Sunday to bid farewell to Pope Shenuda III, his body on a wooden throne, as the church considered a new head of the anxious community.

Shenuda died on Saturday aged 88 after a long illness, setting in motion the process to elect a new patriarch for the Middle East's largest Christian community.

Pope Shenuda III, who died on Saturday aged 88, was a fearless champion of Egypt's Coptic Christians ready to defy the country's Muslim government, but he also took a more conciliatory tone in his final years.

An increasingly frail Shenuda, who rarely appeared in public, was faced in recent years with a spike in attacks against the Coptic community which he led for more than four decades.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi arrived on Saturday in Egypt on a four-day pastoral visit that will also include talks with Egyptian officials and clergymen.

“The latest developments in Egypt had postponed our visit, but I insisted on traveling during this critical situation to express solidarity with the Egyptian people,” al-Rahi said from the Saint Joseph Cathedral.

Foreign ministers from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, meeting in Tunis said Friday the Syrian crisis should be resolved in an "Arab framework" and opposed foreign military intervention in the country.

"We are all against military intervention in Syria, and we want the problem to be resolved in an Arab framework," Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem said after meeting with his Egyptian and Libyan counterparts, Mohamed Amr and Ashour bin Khayyal.

U.S. congressional minority leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday dismissed a row with Egypt over the trial of American democracy activists as a road bump in strong bilateral ties, as she visited Cairo.

The Democrat former speaker led a house delegation that met military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi and parliamentarians, after Egypt defused a crisis with the U.S. by allowing the NGO activists to leave the country.