Mubarak spurns opposition demands to leave office immediately - Washington Post

'Revolution': As protesters vow more marches, violent confrontation is feared

The military's role: Allegiance of armed forces remains a pivotal issue

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ceded some authority to his vice president Thursday but refused to quit, insisting that he would stay in office to oversee a drawn-out transfer of power. His defiance stunned and angered hundreds of thousands of protesters in the capital, who responded with chants of "revolution, revolution."

Enormous crowds, which had gathered in anticipation that Mubarak would announce his resignation in a televised address, expressed disappointment and fury as the message sunk in that the president had no intention of leaving. Some masses moved tentatively toward the heavily guarded state television tower, while others vowed to march on the presidential palace.

"Oh Mubarak, be patient! The people will dig your grave," shouted protesters in the central Tahrir Square late into the night.

Mubarak's rejection of the rebellion, in a rambling late-night speech, capped a confusing day of contradictory messages, exultant expectations and, ultimately, flattened hopes. It left Egyptians and the rest of the world anxious and afraid of how the conflict would unfold in the hours and days ahead.

The Egyptian army, which rolled more tanks into the city center, did not move immediately to impede the demonstrators. But with large protests planned for Friday, the military's allegiance remained a question mark and appeared to swing back and forth between the president and the people.

Some leaders warned that Mubarak was risking a bloody revolt.

"There is no way the Egyptian people right now are ready to accept either the president or the vice president," Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and opposition leader, told CNN. "They have lost all authority, all legitimacy. . . . My fear is that the situation will turn violent."

The developments not only shocked Egyptians but seemed to catch the world by surprise, including the highest levels of the U.S. government. In a written statement, President Obama said "it is not yet clear'' whether the transition to democracy pledged by Mubarak would be "immediate, meaningful or sufficient.''

Earlier Thursday, CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress that "there is a strong likelihood that Mubarak may step down this evening." In an afternoon speech to university students in Michigan, Obama gave no indication that he expected otherwise, calling the events in Egypt "a moment of transformation that's taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change."

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Mubarak unlikely to step down soon: Clinton - Hindustan Times

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might not be able to quit his post as early as being demanded by the protesters as the transition process will take some time to roll out. Clinton described Mubarak's assurance of not running for the presidency again and the dialogue on constitutional reform initiated in the country as "significant actions" but said if Mubarak resigns immediately, presidential election would have to be held in 60 days under the Egyptian constitution.

"He (Mubarak) announced he wouldn't run again. He announced his son wouldn't run again. He announced he was resigning his position of the national party, and his son was resigning his position at the national party.

He installed a vice president for the first time in 30 years. Those are significant actions," Clinton told reporters on her way back from international talks on Egypt in Germany.

She said these were only preliminary steps and do not constitute an orderly transition but welcomed the process of dialogue that has started with the opposition. "... but I think they have to be viewed as a very important set of steps being taken to keep the movement going in the direction that we seek," she said.

Referring to the Egyptian constitution, she said if the President were to resign, he would be succeeded by the Speaker of the house and presidential elections would have to be held in 60 days, and suggested that this is too short a time to arrive at final constitutional reforms.

"Now, the Egyptians are the ones who are having to grapple with the reality of what they must do. And maybe I misheard it, but on CNN this morning... one of the leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al-Baradei, they were saying, 'Well, it's going to take time.

Now, that's not us saying it, it's them saying it," she said. She said once the protests have gotten the attention of the government and the government has launched a response, there is already an effort underway within the civil society, the opposition, the political parties, to decide the future course of action.

"That's a really hard issue. I don't think it's appropriate for us to be sitting thousands of miles away saying, 'Well, this is what you should do, and that's what you should do', and, 'Oh, everybody knows that's self-evident'," Clinton said. She said it is for the country of 80 million people, with a very complex political, economic, and social realities to move ahead in a new direction.

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Warning Against Hasty Exit for Mubarak - New York Times

Her remarks were the Obama administration’s most explicit sign yet of its growing emphasis on averting instability in Egypt, even at the expense of the key demand from the Egyptian protest movement: Mr. Mubarak’s immediate removal.

Citing the Egyptian Constitution, Mrs. Clinton said that if Mr. Mubarak stepped down now, Egypt would have to hold elections for a new president in 60 days — too little time for the government or the opposition to organize a credible vote.

Her comments, made to reporters on the way home from a conference in Munich, echo what administration officials have said privately and some of what the White House’s temporary diplomatic emissary to Cairo, Frank G. Wisner, said publicly on Sunday: Mr. Mubarak is likely to remain in the picture, at least a while longer.

Mrs. Clinton reiterated that Mr. Mubarak’s future was up to the Egyptian people and declined to discuss what role he should play between now and September, when Egypt is scheduled to hold an election in which he has said neither he nor his son Gamal will compete.

But Mr. Mubarak’s resignation now would set off a chain of events, Mrs. Clinton said. Under the Constitution — a document she conceded not having thought about before this week — the speaker of Parliament would step in as a caretaker president, followed by quick elections.

“Now the Egyptians are the ones who are having to grapple with the reality of what they must do,” she said, noting that opposition leaders, including Mohamed ElBaradei, had also talked about the need for time. “That’s not us saying it; that’s the Egyptians saying it,” Mrs. Clinton said.

She made no mention of the desired outcome frequently discussed by protest leaders: that Mr. Mubarak would step down, the Constitution would be suspended for a transition that could take up to a year, the current Parliament would be unseated and then new elections would be held.

For nearly two weeks, as the protests have raged in Cairo, the administration has struggled to square its ties to Mr. Mubarak, a stalwart ally for nearly three decades, with its desire not to be seen as abandoning the demonstrators, who are crying for the president’s immediate departure.

That tension was laid bare in Munich when Mr. Wisner, whom the White House sent last week to ask Mr. Mubarak to announce he would not run for another term, told a high-level security conference that “President Mubarak’s role remains extremely critical in the days ahead.”

While Mrs. Clinton said that Mr. Wisner “does not speak for the administration or the government,” she did not contradict much of his message. Indeed, in a 30-minute conversation, she emphasized the dangers of rushing headlong into a vote without rewriting the Constitution, engaging opposition groups or mastering the mechanics of elections, like how to compile voter rolls.

Mrs. Clinton said she was less worried about Egypt’s being ready for the September elections, provided the government, working with opposition groups, amended the Constitution and repealed statutes like the emergency law, which gives it broad authority to suppress political dissent.

“I think with a concerted effort, with the kind of timelines and concrete steps I’m calling for, it could be done,” she said. “As the enormity of the organizational challenge is confronted by responsible leaders of the protests and the opposition, they’re saying, ‘O.K., we’ve got work to do.’ ”

The administration is in touch with opposition leaders, Mrs. Clinton said, and has expressed willingness to work with them to organize political parties. This international effort would include Britain, Germany and Turkey, where an Islamist party has successfully taken power — a possible template for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which said Sunday it would enter into talks with the government.

Mrs. Clinton declined to say whether Mr. Mubarak should play any role in the transition, which is being managed by Vice President Omar Suleiman. But she suggested Mr. Mubarak had already marginalized himself.

“He announced he wouldn’t run again; he announced his son wouldn’t run again. He announced he was resigning his position in the national party and his son was resigning his position in the national party,” she said.

For Mrs. Clinton, the upheavals in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen are evidence of both common grievances across the Arab world and deep differences in the political makeup of each country.

“It’s striking that in Tunisia, Ben Ali, who’d been in power so long, got out of town,” she said, referring to Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the ousted president. “He didn’t have the depth of support within the institutions of his government that would have enabled him even to attempt to hang on, so he left.”

Other Arab leaders, she said, believe they can ride out the unrest by taking steps to improve the lives of their people. King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen appeared to fit that description.

Mrs. Clinton did not say in which category Mr. Mubarak fit.

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Brotherhood leader 'ready to talk' when Mubarak goes - AFP

Brotherhood leader 'ready to talk' when Mubarak goes(AFP) – 1 hour ago

DUBAI — Egypt's opposition Muslim Brotherhood is ready to hold talks on the transition from President Hosni Mubarak's rule once he has resigned, its supreme guide Mohammed Badie told Al-Jazeera television Friday.

"We stand with all the political forces supporting dialogue with whoever wants to implement reforms in the country after the departure of this unjust, corrupt tyrant," Badie told the Qatar-based satellite channel, referring to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

"We have a single demand. Once it is met we will engage in dialogue," he said in response to a question about the Muslim Brotherhood's willingness to enter dialogue with newly-appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman.

In a television address late on Thursday, Suleiman announced he was open to including the Muslim Brotherhood in talks he plans to hold with the opposition.

"We reached out to them. They were invited. They hesitated," Suleiman said of the Brotherhood, which is officially banned but tolerated in Egypt.

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

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For cautious Mubarak, change became overwhelming - Washington Post

CAIRO - Hosni Mubarak kept Egypt under total control for nearly three decades, not through charisma or inspiration, but by building a system of patronage and brutality that was beyond challenge. In the past two weeks, those methods have failed him.

The popular uprising in the Arab world's biggest country has tested the limits of Mubarak's reliance on the system he inherited and reshaped, and his frequent threat that, without him in charge, the country would face chaos - a tradeoff that the country's middle and upper classes have not been willing to make.

Change here has been pushed by a new generation that refuses to accept the rationalizations of its parents. When the economy began to sour two years ago, young people discovered that a system built on nepotism and bribery was shutting them out of university slots and jobs. Their grievances mounted, and then spilled out on the streets, with demands for an end to Mubarak's authoritarian rule.

Mubarak - aloof and, up to now, savvy about keeping himself in power - attracts great loyalty, still, of course.

His followers call him their father and protector. But interwoven with the passion and faith of those on his side are new feelings - of sympathy. After he addressed the nation Tuesday night, in his pleasant baritone, supporters on the streets of Cairo argued that he's an old man, at 82, and should be allowed his dignity.

Aladdin Elaasar, author of the book "The Last Pharaoh,'' calls Mubarak's government "a neo-sultanistic regime." It's a system, he writes, based not on ideology or even leadership qualities, but on "a mixture of fear and rewards to his collaborators."

Or, as Elaasar put it: "The ruler exercises his power without restraint, at his own discretion."

The blinded 'hero'

Mubarak sits atop the pyramid of Egyptian society. Orders flow down, and money - almost certainly - flows up. Egyptian corruption grew to enormous proportions under him.

"But it was very comfortable for him," said Amaney Jamal, an expert on Arab politics at Princeton University. "He felt the status quo was sustainable."

Under this structure, what doesn't flow back up to the top is reliable information. Mubarak's Egypt is a nation with a huge and pervading police structure, but critics say its spies and torturers were incapable of presenting a reliable picture of the country to the people at the apex, because they rejected anything that didn't fit their own view. "We live in a triangle society," said Abd Al Rahman, an English teacher. The subordinate's duty is to obey, not to discuss and never to question.

This is a weakness of any hierarchical structure, but in Egypt's case it became nearly absolute.

"He has merged his own ego with the state," said Dina Guirguis, of a Washington-based group called Voices for a Democratic Egypt. "He views himself as Egypt's hero."

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Egypt: Mubarak refuses to go as US brokers exit deal - Hindustan Times

Unbowed by a week of mob violence and official entreaties, tens of thousands of Egyptians turned out for another Friday of protest. Defying military orders to “go home,” the anti-government protestors streamed into Tahrir (Liberation) Square after prayers all through the day. Their single demand remained the same: the immediate exit of President Hosni Mubarak. The square was ringed by soldiers and armoured vehicles who searched for weapons. Many demonstrators brought water and food for those who had spent the night securing the area.

There were reports the US government was trying to broker a deal with Egypt’s newly-appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman to bring in an interim reformist government and ease Mubarak out and end the 11-day-old people’s revolt.

Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the leaders of the protest movement, lay out his scenario on Friday: a transitional government headed by a presidential council of two or three, including a military representative. He said Suleiman — a military man who was earlier intelligence chief — was an acceptable figure to sit on a presidential council.

State television declared it a “day of allegiance” for Mubarak. The protestors called it the “day of departure” for Mubarak.
Egyptian defence minister Hussein Tantawi visited the square along with top army officials to assess the situation.
And in his first television interview since the revolt began, Mubarak said he was “fed up” and wanted to quit but feared the nation would “sink into chaos” if he did so. In an earlier speech, he had vowed to remain president “as long as his heart is beating”.

Questions remained about the military. US officials said they’d received assurances from the top brass that they would not fire on demonstrators. Some analysts argued that the army was hoping to tire out the demonstrators. Others said it was hedging its bets, waiting to see who would win the political struggle.
Television images of the protests dried up following harassment and detention of camera crews by pro-Mubarak gangs and the military.

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Egyptians rally for Mubarak to go now - Reuters

Opposition supporters take part in Friday prayers in Tahrir Square in Cairo February 4, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Goran Tomasevic

By Dina Zayed and Shaimaa Fayed

CAIRO | Fri Feb 4, 2011 10:34am EST

CAIRO (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians marched peacefully in Cairo on Friday to demand an immediate end to President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, but there was no word of his generals, or his U.S. allies, squeezing him out just yet.

Hoping for a million-strong turnout nationwide to mark what they called "Departure Day", men and women from across Egyptian society streamed past patient soldiers to join a crowd estimated at about 200,000 in the capital's Tahrir, or Liberation, Square.

Similar pro-democracy rallies were held in other cities.

"Leave! Leave! Leave!" they chanted after weekly Friday prayers in Cairo. A cleric praised the "revolution of the young" and declared: "We want the head of the regime removed."

There was a festive, weekend atmosphere as secular, middle-class professionals and pious, generally poorer, members of the mass Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood, mingled, sang and chanted under banners and ubiquitous Egyptian flags.

Members of the Christian minority were also taking part.

"Game over" said one banner, in English for the benefit of international television channels beaming out live coverage.

The defence minister visited the square, inspecting troops who have promised to protect demonstrators. There was no sign of Mubarak loyalists who attacked protesters on previous days.

"The army and people are united!" the crowds chanted.

"Allahu akbar!" (God is greatest), some protesters cried after the prayers on Tahrir Square.

Iran's supreme leader hailed an "Islamic liberation movement" in Egypt.

Iran's anti-Western, Islamic revolution of 1979 against the repressive, U.S.-funded shah has been cited by some in Israel and the West as creating a possible precedent for Egypt to turn into a major hostile force to Western power in the region if its 60-year-old military-backed secular system falls.

Reuters TV live Tahrir Square, click link.reuters.com/kuf87r

Mubarak interview with ABC, click link.reuters.com/red87r

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US, Egypt in talks; Mubarak 'fed up' - The Hindu

An anti-government protester beckons others to support those at the frontline of clashes with pro-government supporters, near the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo, on Thursday. Photo: AP Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said he is “fed up” and wants to quit but fears that the nation will “sink in chaos” if he steps down.

“He is fed up with being President and would like to leave office now, but cannot, he says, for fear that the country would sink into chaos,” ABC News, which recently interviewed Mr. Mubarak, said.

In his first interview after pro-democracy protests gained momentum, the President blamed opposition Muslim Brotherhood for the violence in Cairo and said “I was very unhappy about yesterday. I do not want to see Egyptians fighting each other.”

On U.S. President Barack Obama’s apparent calls for his resignation, Mr. Mubarak said he told his American counterpart, “You don’t understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now.” He, however, maintained that Mr. Obama is a “very good man.”

When asked about seeing people shouting insults about him and wanting him gone, Mr. Mubarak who has been ruling Egypt for 30 years said, “I don’t care what people say about me. Right now I care about my country, I care about Egypt.”

The 82-year-old leader said he had never planned to run for Presidency during the September election, neither had any plan to pass on the mantle to his son Gamal, who was also present during the interview.

On his feeling after addressing the nation on Monday night when he said he would not run for Presidential election again, Mr. Mubarak said he felt “relief“.

According to the report, Mr. Mubarak was along with his family and his palace was heavily guarded by armed troops, tanks and barbed wires. Protesters’ Friday deadline for Mr. Mubarak’s resignation is ending today.

“I would never run away... I will die on this soil,” he said as the President defended his legacy, recounting the many years he has spent leading his country.

Talks about Mubarak stepping aside now

The Obama administration is in talks with top Egyptian officials about the possible immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and the formation of an interim government that could prepare the country for free and fair elections later this year.

U.S. officials said on Thursday the creation of a military-backed caretaker government in Egypt is one of several ideas being discussed as anti—Mubarak protests escalate in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities.

The officials said the United States isn’t seeking to impose a solution on Egypt but stressed that the administration had made a judgement that Mr. Mubarak has to leave office soon if there is to be a peaceful resolution to the crisis. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic talks that are continuing.

The talks were first reported by The New York Times.

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