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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