Egyptian liberals have abandoned a process to select members of a constitutional panel over accusations that it favors Islamists. The fate of Egypt's transition, meanwhile, hangs in the balance of two court cases.

Liberals in Egypt on Sunday walked out of a meeting to select members of a constitutional panel amid recriminations of Islamist domination, torpedoing a June 7 agreement that called for the body to be split between religious and secular parties.

That agreement, brokered under the pressure of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), allotted 50 of the panel's 100 seats to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Nour party, who together control 70 percent of the parliament. The rest of the seats were to go to other parties in parliament as well as national institutions such as the Coptic Church and the Islamic university of Al-Azhar.

But lawmaker Emad Gad of the liberal Free Egyptians party told the Associated Press that SCAF had not been clear enough and that he had understood the agreement would give an equal amount of seats to religious and secular parties.

Instead, the Brotherhood and al Nour were seeking 50 seats with another 21 seats to go to government institutions. That would leave just 11 seats for the rest of the parties in parliament and 18 seats for "the rest of Egypt," Gad said.