Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has rejected pleas from international envoys to “swallow the reality” that Mohamed Morsi will not return as Egypt’s president, the Brotherhood spokesman said yesterday.

The envoys, trying to resolve a political crisis brought on by the army’s overthrow of the Islamist Morsi a month ago, had visited jailed Brotherhood deputy leader Khairat El-Shater in the early hours yesterday. But he cut the meeting short, saying they should be talking to Morsi, spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said.

From the other side, a senior military source said the army and interim government would offer to free some Muslim Brotherhood members from jail, unfreeze its assets and give it three ministerial posts in a move to end the crisis.

Meanwhile several thousand Islamist supporters marched through downtown Cairo calling for Morsi’s reinstatement and denouncing the army general who led his overthrow.

Marchers chanted “Morsi, Morsi” and “We are not terrorists”, and waved picture of the ousted leader.

The protest showed tension is still running dangerously high in Egypt despite the mediation effort by the United States, the European Union, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Morsi became Egypt’s first freely-elected president in June 2012, 16 months after the overthrow of US-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for nearly 30 years.

But fears that he was trying to establish an Islamist autocracy coupled with a failure to ease economic hardships afflicting most of Egypt’s 84 million people led to huge street demonstrations, triggering the army move.

Speaking about the talks in recent days, Haddad said the envoys “still carry the position that we should swallow the reality and accept that the military coup has happened and try to recover with minimum damage”.

“We refuse to do so,” Haddad told Reuters.

There was no agreement on how to start talks, he added.