Cairo:
Dozens of democracy activists including Americans go on trial in Egypt on Sunday on charges of receiving illegal funding, despite pleas from Washington that the charges be dropped.
Judicial sources say the 43 activists who worked with civil society groups, among them 19 American citizens, will stand trial before a Cairo court.
An official with one of the targeted US groups, who requested anonymity, said that only seven of the American defendants are still in the country, the others apparently having left before a travel ban was imposed on the suspects.
Several of the American suspects have sought refuge in their country's embassy in Cairo, including Sam LaHood, son of US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and head of the Egyptian chapter of the International Republican Institute.
Negad El-Borai, a lawyer for some of the US defendants, said he did not expect his clients to attend the hearing.
"I don't expect them to come, given the way things are going," he told AFP. None of the Americans have been arrested, but they and the other suspects are banned from leaving the country."
Egyptian citizen Nancy Okail, who heads the country's chapter of the US-based democracy advocacy group Freedom House, said she would attend the trial which is expected to start after noon in a Cairo suburb.
"I want to stand for this battle. I don't think I have anything to hide," she told AFP.
The United States, the main foreign benefactor of Egypt's military rulers, has suggested that the trial of the activists may imperil that aid.
Washington provides about $1.3 billion annually in military aid to Cairo, in addition to development assistance.
A senior US administration official said in the Moroccan capital Rabat late on Saturday that "intense" talks were under way to resolve the issue of the democracy activists.
"Intense discussions (are being held) with the Egyptians to try to resolve the situation within days," the official said.
The other foreign non-governmental organisations targeted are the US-based International Centre for Journalists and the German Konrad-Adenauer Foundation.
The defendants also include Egyptians, Germans, Palestinians, Norwegians and Serbs.
Some of the groups had helped to train activists and political candidates to campaign for parliamentary elections that began last November, in Egypt's freest vote in decades.
US legislators and Egyptian activists say the trial is politically motivated.
Prosecutors, backed by police, raided the groups' offices in December, confiscating equipment and sealing their doors.
In a visit to Cairo last week, US Republican Senator John McCain said he was told by military ruler Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi that he was working "diligently" to resolve the issue.
But political intervention in the case would belie the authorities' claim they do not interfere with the independent judiciary, which already faces one of its greatest tests in the murder and corruption trial of ex-president Hosni Mubarak.