'Egypt is Free,' crowds chant after Mubarak quits.
Mubarak Departs
By Ryan Mauro
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned today after heavy popular and international pressure and most likely, an ultimatum from his own military. A new Egypt is being formed but it is unclear what it will look like, though the Muslim Brotherhood is certain to play a major role. The balance of power in the Middle East may soon dramatically change as the Obama administration appears indecisive and confused about the true nature of the Brotherhood.
On Thursday, senior Egyptian officials told the press that Mubarak would announce his resignation later that day. The military commander in Cairo told the protestors that “All your demands will be met today” and following a day’s worth of meetings between the members of the Supreme Military Council that excluded Mubarak, it declared its support “for the legitimate demands on the people.” It seemed certain that the military had told Mubarak that his time was up.
Mubarak’s defiant speech later that day offered no concessions and brought the rage of the Egyptian people to a whole new level. He only said that some powers would be transferred to Vice President Omar Suleiman without offering any detail. Today, the protestors marched on his presidential palaces in Cairo and Alexandria and the state television building. He was forced to flee Cairo and shortly after, it was announced that he was resigning and the Supreme Military Council would take over.
The military was probably compelled to finally kick Mubarak out because of the deteriorating security situation. The institution is tasked with protecting the nation and it had to take action as violent clashes erupted, riots broke out in the area of the Suez Canal and spreading labor strikes paralyzed the economy, especially its crucial tourism sector. Soldiers are being photographed with protestors and were seen smiling when the news broke.
The Supreme Military Council is claiming it will guide a democratic transition and will honor “the legitimate demands of the people.” It is now being reported that the Council will fire the entire government, suspend both houses of parliament and jointly rule with the chief of the Supreme Constitutional Court.
In the short-term, the military takeover benefits Western interests because it will bring stability that could prevent a governmental collapse that permits the Muslim Brotherhood to immediately take power. The economic crisis caused by the unrest would also be exploited by the Islamists. The change in power also ensures that a leadership hostile to radical Islam is in power that understands the threat of the Brotherhood.
Omar Suleiman is a friend of the U.S. who despises the Islamists. A 2006 cable said that the working relationship with Suleiman is “now probably the most successful element” of the American-Egyptian alliance. The released documents show that he refers to the Iranians as “devils” and warned the U.S. in 2006 that the Brotherhood had inspired “11 different Islamist extremist organizations,” which the State Department thought was an effort to make the Brotherhood a “bogey man.” A U.S. diplomat wrote in an August 2008 cable that “there is no question that Israel is most comfortable” with Suleiman taking power in Egypt instead of Mubarak’s son.
However, the Supreme Military Council won’t be in power forever. Islam scholar Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org, told FrontPage that “This is the Muslim Brotherhood’s big chance. They are in the best position they ever have been in to take power in Egypt.” He suggested that the Brotherhood won’t immediately seize the country, but will dominate a coalition government and later begin ousting rival parties.
Mubarak departs; the fate of the Middle East hangs in the balance.
The Brotherhood has rallied behind Mohammed el-Baradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said that “This is the greatest day of my life” when he heard the news of Mubarak’s resignation. He is viewed more favorably in the West as he champions secular democracy, but he defends the Brotherhood by saying they “[are in] no way extremist” and comparing them to Christian evangelicals and Orthodox Jews. He has been favorable to Iran and says the “Israeli occupation only understands violence.”
El-Baradei downplays the Brotherhood’s strength by saying they’ll only win about 20 percent of the vote. Spencer said he believes there is a “calculated strategy of minimizing the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the unrest.” The Brotherhood’s support for el-Baradei is part of that same strategy to stealthily take power without raising alarm. This appears to be working so far as President Obama and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have downplayed the threat from the Brotherhood, even though its leaders have recently confirmed it will move to scrap the peace treaty with Israel and “the people should be prepared for war with Israel.” Two armed members of Hamas were arrested entering Egypt in late January.
It is difficult to discern how well the Brotherhood will fare in the upcoming elections. A new poll by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that the Brotherhood has an approval rating of only 15 percent and support for a presidential candidate from the group only had the support of one percent. Only 12 percent of those polled said they wanted Sharia to be fully implemented and 18 percent approved of Hamas or Iran. The survey also found that only four percent supported Mohammed el-Baradei for president while the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Musa, received 29 percent.
However, this poll only surveyed Egyptians in Cairo and Alexandria, the most Westernized and wealthy parts of the country. The Brotherhood draws most of its support from the poorer areas and so the results are not representative of the country as a whole. A Pew poll last year found huge support for introducing Sharia law into the justice system, including 84 percent support for executing those that leave Islam. It also found that 49 percent support for Hamas (48 percent oppose the terrorist group) and 20 percent support Al-Qaeda with 72 percent opposed.
Michael Rubin writes that the U.S. can influence the outcome of the crisis by endorsing populist causes, such as publicly demanding that the estimated $40 billion taken by Mubarak is returned to the Egyptian people and by taking a clear stance in favor of democratic freedoms. The State Department should make sure a free media exists that allows different voices to be heard. This would allow competition to the Brotherhood and el-Baradei to emerge before the elections.
The U.S. must not send mixed signals that allow Egypt’s neighbors to determine the course of the country and the region. A defection of Egypt to the Islamist bloc would overhaul the balance of power in the region. The removal of Mubarak will also invigorate the uprisings against pro-Western leaders like Jordanian King Abdullah II and Yemeni President Saleh, while anti-Western leaders like Syrian President Assad have been able to stamp out challenges thus far. The fate of the Middle East hangs in the balance.
Chaos Intensifies at Cairo Square AP: Egyptian army moves to end fighting between protesters and government supporters in Cairo's central square as gunfire reportedly kills 10.
Egypt Army Moves to Stop Assault on Protesters
Associated Press - 03 February 2011
CAIRO – Egypt's prime minister apologized for an attack by government supporters on protesters in a surprising show of contrition Thursday, and the government offered more concessions to try to calm the wave of demonstrations demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
Vice President Omar Suleiman promised that Mubarak's son, Gamal, will not seek to succeed his father in presidential elections in September, state TV said. The prospect that the president intends to hand power to his son has been opposed by many Egyptians.
Also, the prosecutor-general banned travel and froze the bank accounts for the former interior minister whose police led a bloody crackdown against the protesters last week and against two other former ministers who were among the unpopular millionaire businessmen wielding heavy influence in the previous government.
The steps came after the protesters who have camped out for days in central Tahrir Square fended off the assault launched Wednesday afternoon by regime supporters. The uncontrolled violence raged through the night, killing eight people as the two sides battled with rocks, sticks, bottles and firebombs and soldiers largely stood by without intervening.
The military finally took its first muscular action after a barrage of deadly automatic weapons fire against the protesters before dawn Thursday. Soldiers pushed back the pro-government attackers and took up positions between the two sides. Then Thursday afternoon, the soldiers largely stepped aside as the anti-government side surged ahead in the afternoon in resumed clashes.
With volleys of stones, the protesters pushed back their rivals swarmed onto a nearby highway overpass that their regime supporters had used as a high ground to batter them.
At the same time, Mubarak supporters carried out a string of attacks on journalists around the square. The U.S. State Department condemned the attacks, calling them a "concerted campaign to intimidate" the media -- the latest in mounting criticism by Mubarak's top ally.
One Greek print journalist was stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver, and a photographer was punched, his equipment smashed. Arab TV network Al-Jazeera reported two correspondents attacked. The army started rounding up journalists, possibly for their own protection.
The protesters accuse the regime of using paid thugs and policemen in civilian clothes in an attempt to crush their movement -- tactics used by the ruling party and security forces in the past against opponents. The Interior Ministry denied any of its police were involved.
Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq acknowledged that the attack "seemed to have been organized" and said elements had infiltratated what began as a demonstration against the protesters to turn it violent. But he said he didn not know who, promising an investigation into who was behind it.
"I offer my apology for everything that happened yesterday because it's neither logical nor rational," Shafiq told state TV. "Everything that happened yesterday will be investigated so everyone knows who was behind it."
Shafiq, a former air force general appointed by Mubarak over the weekend, said he was willing to go to Tahrir to meet protesters but urged them to disperse. At a press conference aired on state TV, Shafiq defended Mubarak's announcement this week that he would serve out the remaining seven months of his term. "Would it be dignified for a nation for its president to leave immediately? .. There are ethics that must be observed."
The notion that the state may have coordinated violence against protesters, whose vigil in Tahrir Square had been peaceful for days, raised international outrage. It brought a sharp rebuke from Washington, which sends Egypt $1.5 billion a year in aid.
"If any of the violence is instigated by the government, it should stop immediately," said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
The anti-Mubarak movement has vowed to intensify protests to force the president out by Friday. In a speech Tuesday night, Mubarak refused to step down immediately, saying he would serve out the remaining seven months of his term -- a halfway concession rejected by the protesters.
On Thursday, a sense of victory ran through the protesters, even as they organized their ranks in the streets in case of a renewed assault.
"Thank God, we managed to protect the whole area," said Abdul-Rahman, a taxi driver who was among thousands who stayed hunkered in the square through the night, hunkered down against the thousands besieging the entrances. "We prevented the pro-Mubarak people from storming the streets leading to the square." He refused to give his full name.
Bands of Mubarak supporters moved through side streets, trading volleys of stone-throwing with the protesters and attacking cars to stop supplies from reaching the protest camp. One band stopped a car, ripped open the trunk and found boxes of juice, water and food, which they took before forcing the driver to flee.
The Mubarak backers seethed with anger at a protest movement that state TV and media have depicted as causing the chaos and paralyzing businesses and livelihoods. "You in Tahrir are the reason we can't live a normal life," one screamed as he threw stones in a side street.
The anti-Mubarak youths posted sentries on the roofs and balconies of buildings around the square to raise the alert of any approaching attackers and rain stones on them. Other look-outs in the streets banged metal poles against pedestrian barriers alarm when they sighted incoming Mubarak backers.
One sentry waved his arms in the air like an airport runway traffic controller, directing defenders carrying piles of stones as ammunition to a side street to fend off an assault. But then another sentry waved a hand across his chest horizontally in a new signal. The crowd understood: false alarm, and they melted back into the square.
The men who led the defense Wednesday and throught the night were easily identified. Many of them had cotton padding and grubby bandages dangling from their faces, arms and legs. Many had chunks of rock stuck to their hair and clumps of dust in their beards. A large number had the trimmed beards of Muslim conservatives, a sign of how the Muslim Brotherhood a major role in the fight.
Wednesday's assault began in the afternoon, when thousands of pro-Mubarak attackers broke into the square where some 10,000 protesters were gathered. Among the attackers were men who charged in on horses and camels, lashing people with whips.
Anti-Mubarak demonstrators traded showers of rocks and other projectiles in a counter-assault that drove their assailants out of the square within hours. The protesters took army trucks and set up an ad-hoc front line on the northern edge of the square, near the Egyptian Museum. The two sides traded volleys of rocks and Molotov cocktails for much of the night.
The escalation came around 4 a.m. when sustained bursts of automatic gunfire and single shots rattled the darkness for more than two hours. Protest organizer Mustafa el-Naggar said the gunfire came from at least three locations in the distance.
Soon after, the military moved. Four tanks cleared a highway overpass from which Mubarak supporters had hurled rocks and firebombs onto the protesters. On the streets below, several hundred soldiers carrying rifles lined up between the two sides, pushing the pro-government fighters back and blocking the main battle lines in front of the famed Egyptian Museum and at other entrances to the square.
Those of you who have been watching Glenn Beck, and particularly those who watched last night’s show will see that he is bringing before an audience of millions the message we have been sending from these sites for nearly a decade — that the global Islamic jihad against the West has formed a working alliance with the secular socialist left both at home and abroad. READ MORE CLICK HERE
At least 100 people have been killed during the week-long protests in Egypt as anti-government demonstrators take to the streets, calling for President Mubarak to step down.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says he will not run for a new term in office in September elections and will work during the rest of his term for a "peaceful transfer of power" in a new attempt to defuse massive protests demanding his immediate ouster.
In a speech aired on state TV Tuesday night, Mubarak said, "In all sincerity, regardless of the current circumstances, I never intended to be a candidate for another term."
He says he will work during "the final months of my current term" to carry out the "necceasary steps for the peaceful transfer of power."
President Obama asked Mubarak Tuesday not to seek re-election in September, effectively ending his 30-year reign, a source tells Fox News.
Al-Jazeera is reporting that the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv is making preparations to welcome him into exile.
Egyptian military police have installed a barbed wire fence around Mubarak's presidential palace in response to protesters marching there Wednesday, according to Al-Jazeera.
This comes as more than a quarter-million people flooded Cairo's main square in a stunning and jubilant array of young and old, urban poor and middle class professionals, mounting by far the largest protest yet in a week of unrelenting demands for Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power.
The crowds -- determined but peaceful -- filled Tahrir, or Liberation, Square and spilled into nearby streets, among them people defying a government transportation shutdown to make their way from rural provinces. Protesters jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, with schoolteachers, farmers, unemployed university graduates, women in conservative headscarves and women in high heels, men in suits and working-class men in scuffed shoes.
They sang nationalist songs, danced, beat drums and chanted the anti-Mubarak slogan "Leave! Leave! Leave!" as military helicopters buzzed overhead. Organizers said the aim was to intensify marches to get the president out of power by Friday, and similar demonstrations erupted in at least five other cities around Egypt.
Soldiers at checkpoints set up at the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering.
The military promised on state TV Monday night that it would not fire on protesters answering a call for a million to demonstrate, a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling as momentum builds for an extraordinary eruption of discontent and demands for democracy in the United States' most important Arab ally.
"This is the end for him. It's time," said Musab Galal, a 23-year-old unemployed university graduate who came by minibus with his friends from the Nile Delta city of Menoufiya.
Mubarak, 82, is the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East, following the ouster last month of Tunisia's president.
The movement to drive Mubarak out has been built on the work of online activists and fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the Tunisia unrest took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a once-unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million people -- the region's most populous country.
The repercussions were being felt around the Mideast, as other authoritarian governments fearing popular discontent pre-emptively tried to burnish their democratic image.
Jordan's King Abdullah II fired his government Tuesday in the face of smaller street protests, named an ex-prime minister to form a new Cabinet and ordered him to launch political reforms. The Palestinian Cabinet in the West Bank said it would hold long-promised municipal elections "as soon as possible."
With Mubarak's hold on power in Egypt weakening, the world was forced to plan for the end of a regime that has maintained three decades of peace with Israel and a bulwark against Islamic militants. But under the stability was a barely hidden crumbling of society, mounting criticism of the regime's human rights record and a widening gap between rich and poor, with 40 percent of the population living under or just above the poverty line set by the World Bank at $2 a day.
The chairman of the powerful U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John Kerry, gave public voice to what senior U.S. officials have said only privately in recent days: that Mubarak should "step aside gracefully to make way for a new political structure."
The U.S. ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, spoke by telephone Tuesday with prominent democracy advocate Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, the embassy said. ElBaradei has taken a key role with other opposition groups in formulating the movement's demands for Mubarak to step down and allow a transitional government paving the way for free elections. There was no immediate word on what Scobey and ElBaradei discussed.
In an interview with Al-Arabiya television, ElBaradei rejected an offer late Monday by Vice President Omar Suleiman for a dialogue on enacting constitutional reforms. He said there could be no negotiations until Mubarak leaves.
Suleiman's offer and other gestures by the regime have fallen flat. The Obama administration roundly rejected Mubarak's appointment of a new government Monday afternoon that dropped his interior minister, who heads police forces and has been widely denounced by the protesters. State TV on Tuesday ran a statement by the new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, pleading with the public to "give a chance" to his government.
The United States, meanwhile, ordered non-essential U.S. government personnel and their families to leave Egypt in an indication of the deepening concern over the situation.
They join a wave of people rushing to flee the country -- over 18,000 overwhelmed Cairo's international airport and threw it into chaos. EgyptAir staff scuffled with frantic passengers, food supplies were dwindling and some policemen even demanded substantial bribes before allowing foreigners to board their planes.
Normally bustling, Cairo's streets outside Tahrir Square had a fraction of their normal weekday traffic. Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the third working day, making cash tight. Bread prices spiraled. An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was in its fifth day.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, though reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
(STORY CONTINUES BELOW)
Obama says the transition in Egypt's leadership 'must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now,' after President Mubarak announces he will not seek re-election.
U.S. 'held secret meeting with Muslim Brotherhood' Discussed fall of Egypt with group dedicated to Islam's global spread. READ MORE CLICK HERE
U.S. 'held secret meeting with Muslim Brotherhood'
Discussed fall of Egypt with group dedicated to Islam's global spread
<<< READ MORE CLICK HERE
Perhaps most startling was how peaceful protests have been in recent days, after the military replaced the police in keeping control and took a policy of letting the demonstrations continue.
Egypt's army leadership has reassured the U.S. that the military does not intend to crack down on demonstrators, but instead is allowing the protesters to "wear themselves out," according to a former U.S. official in contact with several top Egyptian army officers. The Egyptians use a colloquial saying to describe their strategy: A boiling pot with a tight lid will blow up the kitchen, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Troops and Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood at roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous building housing departments of the notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.
Protester volunteers wearing tags reading "the People's Security" circulated through the crowds in the square, saying they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence.
"We will throw out anyone who tries to create trouble," one announced over a loudspeaker. Other volunteers joined the soldiers at the checkpoints, searching bags of those entering for weapons. Organizers said the protest would remain in the square and not attempt to march to avoid frictions with the military.
Two dummies representing Mubarak dangled from traffic lights. On their chests was written: "We want to put the murderous president on trial." Their faces were scrawled with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters' feeling that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, still seen by most Egyptians as their country's archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.
Every protester had their own story of why they came -- with a shared theme of frustration with a life pinned in by corruption, low wages, crushed opportunities and abuse by authorities.
Sahar Ahmad, a 41-year-old school teacher and mother of one, said she has taught for 22 years and still only makes about $70 a month.
"There are 120 students in my classroom. That's more than any teacher can handle," said Ahmad. "Change would mean a better education system I can teach in and one that guarantees my students a good life after school. If there is democracy in my country, then I can ask for democracy in my own home."
Tamer Adly, a driver of one of the thousands of minibuses that ferry commuters around Cairo, said he was sick of the daily humiliation he felt from police who demand free rides and send him on petty errands, reflecting the widespread public anger at police high-handedness.
"They would force me to share my breakfast with them ... force me to go fetch them a newspaper. This country should not just be about one person," the 30-year-old lamented, referring to Mubarak.
Among the older protesters, there was also a sense of amazement after three decades of unquestioned control by Mubarak's security forces over the streets.
"We could never say no to Mubarak when we were young, but our young people today proved that they can say no, and I'm here to support them," said Yusra Mahmoud, a 46-year-old school principal who said she had been sleeping in the square alongside other protesters for the past two nights.
Authorities shut down all roads and public transportation to Cairo and in and out of other main cities, security officials said. Train services nationwide were suspended for a second day and all bus services between cities were halted.
Still, many from the provinces managed to make it to the square. Hamada Massoud, a 32-year-old a lawyer, said he and 50 others came in cars and minibuses from the impoverished province of Beni Sweif south of Cairo.
"Cairo today is all of Egypt," he said. "I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president."
Tens of thousands rallied in the cities of Alexandria, Suez and Mansoura, north of Cairo, as well as in the southern province of Assiut and Luxor, the southern city where some 5,000 people protested outside an ancient Egyptian temple.
The various protesters have little in common beyond the demand that Mubarak go.
A range of movements is involved, with sometimes conflicting agendas -- including students, online activists, grass-roots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
Perhaps the most significant tensions among them are between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form a state governed by Islamic law. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to co-opt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement. American officials have suggested they have similar fears.
A second day of talks among opposition groups fell apart after many of the youth groups boycotted the meeting over charges that some of the traditional, government-condoned opposition parties have agreed to start a dialogue with Suleiman.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A screen grab from Egyptian state television of President Hosni Mubarak delivering an address announcing that he will not run for a new term in office in September elections.
Mubarak Says He Won’t Run for President Again
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and MARK LANDLER
CAIRO — President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would not run for another term in elections scheduled for the fall, appearing on state television to promise an orderly transition but saying he would serve out his term. In comments translated by CNN, he swore that he would never leave Egypt but would “die on its soil.”
Television cameras showed the vast crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in central Cairo roaring, but not necessarily in approval. The protesters have made the president’s immediate and unconditional resignation a bedrock demand of their movement, and it did not appear that the concession mollified them. Reports said that thousands of protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square chanted "Leave! Leave!" after the speech.
Mr. Mubarak’s announcement came after President Obama urged him not to run, effectively withdrawing America’s support for its closest Arab ally, according to American diplomats in Cairo and Washington.
The message was delivered by Frank G. Wisner, a seasoned envoy with deep ties to Egypt, the American diplomats said. Mr. Wisner’s message, they said, was not a blunt demand for Mr. Mubarak to step aside now, but rather firm counsel that he should make way for a reform process that would culminate in free and fair elections in September to elect a new Egyptian leader.
This back channel message, authorized directly by Mr. Obama, appeared to tip the administration beyond the delicate balancing act it has performed in the last week — resisting calls for Mr. Mubarak to step down, even as it has called for an “orderly transition” to a more politically open Egypt.
In remarks after Mr. Mubarak’s announcement, Mr. Obama said he spoke directly to the Egyptian leader. “He recognizes that the status quo is not sustainable,” Mr. Obama said. The president said he told Mr. Mubarak an orderly transition ”must begin now” and “include opposition parties.” And to the young people protesting the government, Mr. Obama said, “We hear your voices.”
It was not clear whether the administration favored Mr. Mubarak’s turning over the reins to a transitional government, composed of leaders of the opposition movement and perhaps under the leadership of Mohamed ElBaradei, or to a caretaker government led by members of the existing government, including the newly appointed vice president, Omar Suleiman.
The decision to nudge Mr. Mubarak in the direction of leaving is a critical step for the United States in defining its dealings not just with its most critical ally in the Arab world, but also with the rising swell of popular anger on the streets of Cairo and in countries like Jordan, Yemen, Algeria and Tunisia.
Mr. Wisner, who had been expected to leave Egypt on Tuesday but decided to extend his stay, is among the United States’ most experienced diplomats, and a friend of Mr. Mubarak. His mission was to “keep a conversation going,” according to a close friend of Mr. Wisner.
As a result, this person said, the administration’s first message to the Egyptian leader was not that he had to leave office, but rather that his time in office was quickly coming to a close. Mr. Wisner, who consulted closely with the White House, is expected to be the point person dealing with Mr. Mubarak as the situation evolves, and perhaps as the administration’s message hardens.
Mr. Wisner’s mission took shape over the weekend in a White House meeting, after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recommended him to the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon.
Reinforcing the administration’s message to Mr. Mubarak was an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Tuesday by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he advised Mr. Mubarak to bow out gracefully “to make way for a new political structure.”
Egyptians turned out around the country on Tuesday in the largest demonstrations yet to demand Mr. Mubarak’s ouster. They may hold to that demand and want even more far-reaching change, as Tunisians did after their strongman president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled in mid-January.
In Tahrir Square earlier in the day, the chants of perhaps 200,000 protesters had suggested that the demonstrators would not stop at Mr. Mubarak’s departure.
“The people of Egypt want the president on trial,” some chanted for the first time, shadowed by the burned headquarters of Mr. Mubarak’s ruling party and a vast complex housing a bureaucracy many Egyptians have accused of endlessly humiliating them.
Others chorused: “The people of Egypt want the government to fall.”
“Nobody wants him, nobody,” said El-Mahdy Mohamed, one of the demonstrators. “Can’t he see on the TV what’s happening?”
While the numbers fell short of the million called for at the square, the protest rivaled some of the most epic moments in Egypt’s tumultuous modern history, from the wars with Israel to a coup that sent a corpulent monarch packing on his yacht in 1952.
With little regard, protesters defied a curfew that has become a joke to residents here and overcame attempts by the government to keep protesters away by closing roads, suspending train service and shutting down public transportation to Cairo. Some walked miles to the square, whose name means liberation. Others woke up there in the muddy patches where they had slept for days.
“No one would have imagined a week before that this would happen in Egypt,” said Bassem Ramsis, 37, a director who returned from Spain for the uprising.
The momentous events in Egypt, the most populous Arab country and once the axis on which the Arab world revolved, have reverberated across the region. Earlier in the day, King Abdullah II of Jordan fired his cabinet after protests there, and organizers in Yemen and Syria, with their own authoritarian rulers, have called for protests.
In scale and message, the protests in Egypt were a remarkable expression of unity in a country that once represented the Arab world’s nexus but stagnated under Mr. Mubarak’s withering authoritarianism. Peasants from southern Egypt joined Islamists from the Nile Delta and businessmen from upper-class suburbs rubbed shoulders with street-smart youths from gritty Bulaq in a square that served as a vast tapestry of a country’s diversity joined in a blunt message: Mr. Mubarak must surrender power.
“Go already,” read one sign held aloft. “My arm’s starting to hurt.”
Tens of thousands of people also took to the streets of Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, north of Cairo on the Mediterranean coast.
Meanwhile, the thousands of foreigners seeking to flee the country led to chaotic scenes at the Cairo airport. The United States ordered all nonemergency embassy and other American government personnel to leave the country, fearing unrest as the protests continue.
The breadth of the uprising, organized by youthful activists and driven by the legions of poor and dispossessed in Egypt, a country of 80 million, stunned even those most critical of Mr. Mubarak’s government. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful opposition movement, has largely stayed in the background. Other opposition leaders — the Nobel laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei among them — have struggled to cultivate support among the protesters, whose demands seem to grow as the uprising gathers force.
Margaret Scobey, the American ambassador to Egypt, spoke by telephone to Mr. ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who has emerged as a potential rallying point for opposition, as American officials sought to navigate an uprising that has not only challenged their most loyal ally in the region but also posed a threat to a broader American-backed order in Jordan, Yemen and the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
Mr. ElBaradei told Reuters that Mr. Mubarak must leave the country before any dialogue could start between the opposition and the government.
“There can be dialogue but it has to come after the demands of the people are met and the first of those is that President Mubarak leaves,” Mr. ElBaradei told Al Arabiya television. “I hope to see Egypt peaceful and that’s going to require as a first step the departure of President Mubarak. If President Mubarak leaves, then everything will progress correctly.”
Calls for Mr. Mubarak to step aside had been growing. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — a predominantly Islamic country often held up as a model of Western-style democracy — canceled a visit to Egypt planned for next week, urging Mr. Mubarak to “listen to people’s outcries and extremely humanistic demands” and to “meet the freedom demands of people without a doubt,” Reuters reported.
__________________________
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo and Mark Landler from Washington. Reporting was contributed from Cairo by Anthony Shadid, Mona El-Naggar, Kareem Fahim, and Robert F. Worth from Cairo; Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet from Alexandria; and Alan Cowell from London.
