CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi defended his handling of some of the nation’s most pressing problems in a nearly two-hour television interview on Saturday, and pledged to appoint new Cabinet ministers in a move that could ease the country’s deep political polarization.

Reshuffling the Cabinet has been a key demand of the nation’s largely liberal and secular opposition, which is at odds with Morsi’s Islamist backers over a myriad of issues that have surfaced since the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

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