The Obama administration is poised to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic assistance to Egypt, US officials have said. An announcement is expected this week.

Meanwhile, An Egyptian court yesterday set November 4 as the opening date for the trial of ousted president Mohamed Morsi on charges of inciting the murder of protesters, state media reported.

Morsi will stand trial with 14 other defen-

dants over the killings of protesters outside his palace in December 2012, almost seven months before his ouster in a military coup, the official MENA news agency reported.

Prosecutors have charged Morsi with "inciting his supporters to commit premeditated murder'1 during the Decembers clashes outside his presidential palace.

The US has been considering such a move since the Egyptian military removed the country's first democratically elected leader in June. It would be a dramatic shift for the Obama administration, which has declined to label President Mohamed Morsi's ousting a coup and has argued it is in US national security interests to keep aid flowing.

The decision is likely to have profound implications for relations between the US and Egypt after decades of close ties that have served as a bulwark of security and stability in the Middle East.

The US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk publicly before the administration's official announcement.

President Obama's top national security aides recommended the aid cutoff in late August - a policy shift Obama had been expected to announce last month. But the announcement got sidetracked by the debate over whether to launch military strikes against Syria.

The US provides Egypt with $ 1.5bn a year in aid, $ 1.3bn of which is military assistance; the rest is economic. Some of the aid goes to the government and some to other groups but it is only the money that goes to the government that would be suspended.

Officials told the Associated Press in September that the recommendation calls for a significant amount of aid to be withheld but this payment could be restored once a democratically elected government is returned.