Oliver Weiken / EPA

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi gesturing during an interview Saturday.

CAIRO - Islamist members of the Muslim Brotherhood were given greater influence in Egypt’s government on Tuesday when President Mohamed Morsi reshuffled his cabinet in response to demands for change.

Opposition parties and many citizens have complained of mismanagement and have urged changes, including the removal of Prime Minister Hesham Kandil.

The limited reshuffle is unlikely to satisfy his opponents or help build political consensus in the country, which is still struggling to establish a stable system in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring revolution that removed Hosni Mubarak from power.

Two of the ousted ministers were involved in crucial talks with the IMF over a $4.8 billion loan to Egypt, Reuters reported.

Nine new ministers were named, including Amr Darrag, a senior official in the Muslim Brotherhood movement’s Freedom and Justice Party, who was appointed planning minister, according to Reuters.

Another Brotherhood member, Yehya Hamed, was named investment minister, and Ahmed el-Gezawi, an FJP member, took over agriculture, lifting the movement's share to around a third of the cabinet's 35 portfolios.

Fayyad Abdel Moneim, a specialist in Islamic economics, was appointed as finance minister, replacing Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegaz, Reuters said.

Amr Moussa, Egypt's former foreign minister, former head of the Arab League and currently one of the leaders of the opposition National Salvation Front, said in a statement: “The cabinet reshuffle has not added or changed much. We will need another reshuffle soon."

“We need [a] national-unity-based government with high expertise so people can trust it. The challenges are huge," he added. "Therefore the current government will not be able to handle the situation. The current reshuffle reflects another complete Brotherhood-ization. Wouldn't it have been more useful to take a bigger step towards national cooperation and unity?”

Morsi announced on April 20 that he would carry out the reshuffle to replace a government widely criticized for failing to get the economy moving nine months into his presidency.

"The reshuffle is unlikely to signal any real shift in policy, particularly from an economic perspective," Said Hirsh, a London-based economist, told Reuters. "If anything, it deals a blow to demands for political consensus which the government seems to have ignored." 

Reuters and NBC News' Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

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Domenico Stinellis / AP

Italian Premier-designate Enrico Letta speaks during a press conference at the Quirinale Presidential Palace in Rome, Saturday, April 27, 2013.

Italian center-left politician Enrico Letta said on Saturday he had won support of other parties to form a coalition government that will include one of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's closest allies as deputy prime minister.

Letta met President Giorgio Napolitano after talks with Berlusconi and leaders of his center-right People of Freedom (PDL) party to confirm that he had reached an accord which would clear the way for a government to be formed.

"I hope that this government can get to work quickly in the spirit of fervent cooperation and without any prejudice or conflict," Napolitano told reporters.

PDL secretary Angelino Alfano will be deputy prime minister and interior minister, giving the center-right a powerful voice at the heart of the new government.

Bank of Italy director general Fabrizio Saccomanni will take the key economy ministry portfolio and former European Commissioner Emma Bonino will be foreign minister.

The government, which Letta said would contain a record number of women ministers, will be sworn in at 5:30 a.m. EDT on Sunday and Letta is expected to go before parliament to seek a vote of confidence on Monday.

Letta, 46, the deputy leader of the center-left Democratic Party (PD), spent more than two hours on Saturday in talks with Berlusconi, who will not be a member of the government but is likely to play an important backstage role.

Letta is on the right of the PD and the nephew of one of Berlusconi's closest aides.

Agreement had been held up by wrangling over ministerial posts and policy differences, notably over Berlusconi's demand to scrap the unpopular IMU housing tax, a move that would blow an 8 billion euro hole in this year's budget plans.

Italy, the euro zone's third largest economy, has been without an effective government for months, with the long post-election deadlock holding up any concerted effort to end a recession set to become the longest since World War Two.

Letta received some encouragement late on Friday when the ratings agency Moody's kept its rating on Italian government debt unchanged at Baa2 because low interest rates were making it possible to buy time to implement much-needed reforms.

Bond yields have fallen to their lowest in more than two years as investors hope for enough stability to help Italy revive its economy and gradually tackle its large public debt.

However, Moody's also said medium-term growth prospects were weak and forecast the economy would shrink by 1.8 percent this year, compounding more than two decades of stagnation

Letta has said his priorities will be boosting the economy and tackling unemployment, restoring confidence in Italy's discredited political institutions and trying to turn Europe away from austerity to focus more on growth and investment.

On paper, the priorities laid out by Letta fit in well with proposals from Berlusconi's camp, which has attacked the austerity policies of outgoing prime minister Mario Monti.

Berlusconi, in the middle of legal battles over a tax fraud conviction and charges of paying for sex with a minor, had pressed for the cabinet to include close political allies and had opposed the inclusion of technocrats.

In the event, however, several of the big ministries were led by non-political figures.

As well as Saccomanni at the economy ministry, Anna Maria Cancellieri, the former police official who served as interior minister under Monti took the justice portfolio, while the labor ministry went to Enrico Giovannini, head of statistics agency ISTAT.

Monti's centrist movement Civic Choice obtained a token presence in the government, with Mario Mauro taking the defense ministry.

Letta has had to fight strong resistance in parts of the Democratic Party to an accord with Berlusconi, its sworn enemy for almost 20 years.

The center-left, which threw away a 10-point lead before the elections poll and now trails Berlusconi by more than five points, according to a poll by the SWG institute on Friday.

The other main force in parliament, Beppe Grillo's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, has ruled out taking part in a government made up of the two main parties. He called the right-left coalition "an orgy worthy of the best of bunga bunga", a reference to Berlusconi's parties at his private villas.

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Ronen Zvulun / Reuters, file

Yair Lapid, right, stands behind Israeli President Shimon Peres, who is seated next to Benjamin Netanyahu, at a reception in Jerusalem on Feb. 5. Lapid, a relative newcomer, has been able to gain numerous concessions from the veteran Netanyahu as the latter struggled to form a coalition government.

News analysis

TEL AVIV -- It is no surprise that Benjamin Netanyahu will be Israel's prime minister for the third time. The makeup of his Cabinet, however, may be jarring, especially to him.

Two days before the deadline imposed by election rules, he overcame the final obstacles and reached a compromise with Yair Lapid, the political novice who heads the second-largest party in the Israeli Knesset.

The agreement, which is expected to be signed Thursday, gives his coalition 68 seats out of 120 in the new parliament, which should be sworn in next week.

Lapid may be a novice, but analysts here say he achieved major victories over the prime minister. He demanded that there be a maximum of 20 Cabinet ministers instead of the bloated 30.

Struggling to find seats for his party members, Netanyahu fought tooth and nail against Lapid and lost. There are now likely to be 22, including Netanyahu.

Netanyahu was determined to keep the education portfolio for his own party. Lapid insisted on having it and appears to have won.

It didn't all go Lapid's way, but the message to the voters is clear: Lapid is the man to watch. Indeed, the former television host has already let it be known that he wants to be Israel's next prime minister.

If Lapid, and for other reasons Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman, were the winners in the Jan. 22 elections, the losers, to a large extent, were the ultra-orthodox religious parties. The Haredim, as they are known here, who form 10 percent of Israel's population and are by far the fastest-growing group, have no seat at the Cabinet table.

That means the government has the opportunity to cut the funds devoted to ultra-orthodox institutions such as their study yeshivas and schools, which in the 2012 education budget totaled close to $1 billion.

Large state subsidies go to their traditionally large families and fund the men who study the Torah full time. These are some of the issues that upset Lapid and his voters, and that now, as Israel's minister of finance, he would have an opportunity to change. That's why control of the education ministry was so important to him: Most yeshiva funding goes through that ministry.

Bad blood
This is not what Netanyahu wanted. He wanted his usual rightist/ultra-orthodox coalition. Instead, through failed brinksmanship he ended up with exactly the opposite: a coalition of his rightist party, Likud-Beitenu, with the left and center, as well as with his natural partner, another new young politician, Naftali Bennett, who leads a rightist party that coordinated every move with Yair Lapid.

Blame the wife. That's what the analysts here say. Bennett, who was once Netanyau's chief of staff, had a major falling out with Sara Netanyahu, ending in bad blood between him and the prime minister.

The natural coalition after the January elections was between the two rightist parties, Netanyahu's 31 seats and Bennett's 12 seats, which would have guaranteed them power if allied with the ultra-orthodox parties. Experts say Netanyahu should have drafted Bennett to the cause immediately.

Instead Netanyahu miscalculated and, reportedly because of personal animus, tried to form the basis of a government without him.

That drove Bennett into the arms of Lapid, where he stayed. The two new young leaders displayed a virtue rare in politics: loyalty to an ideological opponent, based on the power of their word.

Result: Netanyahu has what he most wants, the position of prime minister. But he has the Cabinet that he least wants. A rocky term awaits him.

NBC News' Martin Fletcher is the author of "The List,""Breaking News" and "Walking Israel."

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Full Israel coverage from NBC News

Anis Mili / Reuters

Tunisian protesters clash with riot police during a demonstration after the death of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid, outside the Interior ministry in Tunis on Feb. 6, 2013. Tunisia's secular opposition Popular Front said it was pulling out of the constituent assembly charged with writing a constitution after an opposition politician was killed on Wednesday.

Published at 6:30 p.m. ET: TUNIS -- Tunisia's ruling Islamists dissolved the government on Wednesday and promised rapid elections in a bid to calm the biggest street protests since the revolution two years ago, sparked by the killing of an opposition leader.

The prime minister's announcement that an interim cabinet of technocrats would replace his Islamist-led coalition came at the end of a day which had begun with the gunning down of Chokri Belaid, a left-wing lawyer with a modest political following but who spoke for many who fear religious radicals are stifling freedoms won in the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

During the day, protesters battled police in the streets of the capital and other cities, including Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of the Jasmine Revolution that toppled Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

In Tunis, the crowd set fire to the headquarters of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party which won the most seats in an legislative election 16 months ago.

Prime Minister Hamdi Jebali of Ennahda spoke on television in the evening to declare that weeks of talks among the various political parties on reshaping the government had failed and that he would replace his entire cabinet with non-partisan technocrats until elections could be held as soon as possible.

It followed weeks of deadlock in the three-party coalition. The small, secular Congress for the Republic, whose leader Moncef Marzouki has served as Tunisia's president, threatened to withdraw unless Ennahda replaced some of its ministers.

Wednesday's events, in which the Interior Ministry said one police officer was killed, appeared to have moved Jebali, who will stay on as premier, to take action.

"After the failure of negotiations between parties on a cabinet reshuffle, I have decided to form a small technocrat government," he said.

"The murder of Belaid is a political assassination and the assassination of the Tunisian revolution," he said earlier.

It was not clear whom he might appoint but the move seemed to be widely welcomed and streets were mostly calm after dark.

A leader in the secular Republican Party gave Jebali's move a cautious welcome.

"The prime minister's decision is a response to the opposition's aspirations," Mouldi Fahem told Reuters. "We welcome it in principle. We are waiting for details."

Beji Caid Essebsi, leader of the secular party Nida Touns, who was premier after the uprising, told Reuters: "The decision to form a small cabinet is a belated move but an important one."

Divisions
The widespread protests following Belaid's assassination showed the depth of division between Islamists and secular movements fearful that freedoms of expression, cultural liberty and women's rights were under threat just two years after the popular uprising ended decades of Western-backed dictatorship.

"This is a black day in the history of modern Tunisia. Today we say to the Islamists, 'get out', enough is enough," said Souad, a 40-year-old schoolteacher outside the ministry.

"Tunisia will sink in the blood if you stay in power."

Calls for a general strike on Thursday could bring more trouble though Belaid's family said his funeral, another possible flashpoint, might not be held until Friday.

Ennahda, like its fellow Islamists in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, benefited from a solid organization that survived repression by the old regime, to win 42 of seats in the assembly elected in October 2011 to draft a new constitution.

And as in Egypt, the Islamists have faced criticism from secular leaders that they are trying to entrench religious ideas in the new state. A constitution is still due to be agreed before a parliamentary election which had been expected by June.

Belaid, 48, was shot at close range as he left for work by a gunmen who fled on the back of a motorcycle. Within hours, crowds were battling police, hurling rocks amid volleys of teargas in scenes reminiscent of clashes in Egypt last month.

World powers, increasingly alarmed at the extent of radical Islamist influence and the bitterness of the political stalemate, urged Tunisians to reject violence and see through the move to democracy they began two years ago, when their revolution ended decades of dictatorship and inspired fellow Arabs in Egypt and across North Africa and the Middle East.

As in Egypt, the rise to power of political Islam through the ballot box has prompted a backlash among less organized, more secular political movements in Tunisia. Belaid, who made a name for himself by criticizing Ben Ali, led a party with little electoral support but his vocal opinions had a wide audience.

The day before his death he was publicly lambasting a "climate of systematic violence." He had blamed tolerance shown by Ennahda and its two, smaller secularist allies in the coalition government toward hardline Salafists for allowing the spread of groups hostile to modern culture and liberal ideas.

On Wednesday, thousands demonstrated in cities including Mahdia, Sousse, Monastir and Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the revolution, where police fired teargas and warning shots at protesters who set cars and a police station on fire.

While Belaid's nine-party Popular Front bloc has only three seats in the constituent assembly, the opposition jointly agreed to pull its 90 or so members out of the body, which is acting as parliament and writing the new post-revolution charter. Ennahda and its fellow ruling parties have some 120 seats.

Since the uprising, Tunisia's new leaders have faced many protests over economic hardship and political ideas; many have complained that hardline Salafists may hijack the revolution.

Last year, Salafist groups prevented several concerts and plays from taking place in Tunisian cities, saying they violated Islamic principles. Salafists also ransacked the U.S. Embassy in September, during international protests over an Internet video.

The embassy issued a statement condemning Belaid's killing and urging justice for his killers: "There is no justification for this heinous and cowardly act," it said. "Political violence has no place in the democratic transition in Tunisia."

Economic troubles
Declining trade with the crisis-hit eurozone has left the 11 million Tunisians struggling to achieve the better living standards many had hoped for following Ben Ali's departure.

Its compact size, relatively skilled workforce and close ties with former colonial power France and other European neighbors across the Mediterranean has raised hopes that Tunisia can set an example of economic progress for the region.

Lacking the huge oil and gas resources of North African neighbors Libya and Algeria, Tunisia counts tourism as a major currency earner and further unrest could scare off visitors vital to an industry only just recovering from the revolution.

Jobless graduate Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in December 2010 in the city, 180 miles southwest of Tunis, after police confiscated his unlicensed fruit cart, triggering the uprising that forced Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia less than a month later, on Jan. 14, 2011.

President Moncef Marzouki, who last month warned the tension between secularists and Islamists might lead to "civil war", cancelled a visit to Egypt scheduled for Thursday and cut short a trip to France, where he addressed the European Parliament.

"There are political forces inside Tunisia that don't want this transition to succeed," Marzouki said in Strasbourg. "When one has a revolution, the counter revolution immediately sets in because those who lose power - it's not only Ben Ali and his family - are the hundreds of thousands of people with many interests who see themselves threatened by this revolution."

Belaid, who died in hospital, said this week dozens of people close to the government had attacked a Popular Front group meeting in Kef, northern Tunisia, on Sunday. He had been a constant critic of the government, accusing it of being a puppet of the rulers of wealthy Gulf emirate Qatar.

Denies involvement
Human Rights Watch called his murder "the gravest incident yet in a climate of mounting violence."

Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi denied any involvement by his party in the killing.

"Is it possible that the ruling party could carry out this assassination when it would disrupt investment and tourism?" Ghannouchi told Reuters.

He blamed those seeking to derail Tunisia's democratic transition: "Tunisia today is in the biggest political stalemate since the revolution. We should be quiet and not fall into a spiral of violence. We need unity more than ever," he said.

He accused opponents of stirring up sentiment against his party following Belaid's death. "The result is burning and attacking the headquarters of our party in many areas," he said.

Witnesses said crowds had also attacked Ennahda offices in Sousse, Monastir, Mahdia and Sfax.

French President Francois Hollande said he was concerned by the rise of violence in Paris's former dominion, where the government says al Qaeda-linked militants linked to those in neighboring countries have been accumulating weapons with the aim of creating an Islamic state across North Africa.

"This murder deprives Tunisia of one of its most courageous and free voices," Hollande's office said in a statement.

Related:

'Great anger' rises in Tunisia after slaying of opposition leader

Reuters

Deputies scuffle during a session in the chamber of the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev on Thursday. Opposition deputies brought proceedings to a halt inside the Ukrainian parliament on Thursday, when they staged an action against the bill about the basics of the language policy.

Maks Levin / AP

Lawmakers from pro-presidential and oppositional factions fight in the parliament session hall in Kiev, Ukraine on Thursday. A violent scuffle has erupted in Ukraine's parliament over a bill that would allow the use of the Russian language in courts, hospitals and other institutions in the Russian-speaking regions of the country.

Reuters

Deputies scuffle during a session in the chamber of the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev.

Maks Levin / AP

An opposition lawmaker Mykola Petruk receives first aid after fighting between pro-presidential and opposition factions in the parliament session hall in Kiev.

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