Kerry Says Removing Morsi From Power Could Have Averted a Civil War in Egypt

But refuses to call what happened a coup

AMMAN, Jordan, July 18 (UPI) -- Egypt may have dodged a civil war by ousting President Mohamed Morsi, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, refusing again to call the ouster a coup.

"What complicates it obviously is that you had an extraordinary situation in Egypt of life and death, of the potential of civil war and enormous violence, and you now have a constitutional process proceeding forward very rapidly. So we have to measure all of those facts against the law," Kerry told reporters in Amman, Jordan, with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh.