Anti-government protesters rally Saturday in front of army tanks near Cairo's Tahrir Square.
February 5th, 2011
12:48 PM ET
Read full coverage of the unrest in Egypt updated continually by CNN reporters worldwide. Send your photos and video to iReport and see CNN in Arabic here. See also this strong roundup of timely, insightful views on the wave of upheaval in the Arab world
[Update 7:46 p.m. in Cairo, 12:46 p.m. ET] Among those submitting their resignations from Egypt's National Democratic Party were Gamal Mubarak, President Hosni Mubarak's son, state television reported. Housam Badrawi was appointed as the new secretary-general of the national party, replacing Safwat el Sherif, as well as head of the strategy and politics committee, replacing Gamal Mubarak.
"As the president has repeatedly said, Egyptians will be the ones that decide how this transition occurs," said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, on Gamal Mubarak's resignation. "We welcome any step that provides credibility to that process."
"We view this as a positive step toward the political change that will be necessary, and look forward to additional steps," an administration official said.
President Hosni Mubarak remains head of state.
[Update 7:20 p.m. in Cairo, 12:20 p.m. ET] Members of the general secretariat of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party submitted their resignations, state TV reported. It did not confirm an earlier report that President Hosni Mubarak had resigned from his party post.
[Update 6:46 p.m. in Cairo, 11:46 a.m. ET] President Hosni Mubarak has resigned as head of the National Democratic Party, along with other members of the party's general secretariat, state TV reported.
[Update 6:03 p.m. in Cairo, 11:03 a.m. ET] The U.S. State Department said it was operating one flight Saturday to evacuate U.S. citizens from Egypt. It was headed for Athens, Greece. There was no word on how many Americans would be transported.
[Update 5:58 p.m. in Cairo, 10:58 a.m. ET] Amnesty International is urging an investigation into the detention of 35 journalists and human rights activists documenting the crisis in Egypt. Two who were detained are staff members for the human rights group. They were freed after spending two days in military custody.
[Update 5:02 p.m. in Cairo, 10:02 a.m. ET] Talks between newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman and a few opposition groups started Saturday.
At a news conference Saturday, Interior Ministry spokesman Ismail Othman said, "The army remains neutral and is not taking sides because if we protect one side we will be perceived as bias ... our role is to prevent clashes and chaos as we separate the opposing groups."
Egyptian courts will return to work Sunday, the justice minister announced on state TV Saturday.
[Update 4:48 p.m. in Cairo, 9:48 a.m. ET] Khaled Serri Seyam, the head of the Egyptian stock market, told the official Egyptian news agency that the decision to reopen the market on Monday is now canceled and that the stock market will stay closed for now.
[Update 4:09 p.m. in Cairo, 9:09 a.m. ET] The German diplomat who said there was an assassination attempt against Egypt's new vice president has retracted his comments. "I was led to believe that we had a confirmed report but in fact we didn't," he told CNN. He added the information he received was based on an unsubstantiated source.
[Update 3:36 p.m. in Cairo, 8:36 a.m. ET] Opposition demonstrators formed a human chain to block Egyptian army tanks from entering the anti-government redoubt in Cairo's Tahrir Square, CNN's Ivan Watson reported. This is the first sign of tension between the demonstrators and the Egyptian military since the protests erupted, but the standoff lasted just a short time, CNN's Arwa Damon reported.
[Update 2:49 p.m. in Cairo, 7:49 a.m. ET] Amid widespread criticism of Egypt for attacks on journalists, the country's prime minister on Saturday said there have been "no instructions to hinder the coverage of the media in the Tahrir area." "I made clear that they have full freedom to do anything they want," Ahmed Shafiq said.
[Update 2:26 p.m. in Cairo, 7:26 a.m. ET] Egypt's El Arish natural gas pipeline to Jordan has been closed after an attack set it on fire, the head of Jordan's national electricity company told CNN on Saturday. Ghaleb Al Maabreh said repairs will take at least a week, and will be paid for by Jordan.
[Update 2:17 p.m. in Cairo, 7:17 a.m. ET] Protesters formed a new opposition group Saturday to represent anti-government demonstrators gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Mohamed ElBaradei's Association for National Change and a leftist Tagammu party leader announced the new group of 10 people, which includes ElBaradei, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Beltagy and liberal Ghad party leader Ayman Nour. The newly formed opposition group is calling for Mubarak's resignation and the right to demonstrate peacefully.
[Update 2 p.m. in Cairo, 7 a.m. ET] An assassination attempt was made on Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman, the host of the Munich Security Conference said Saturday. During a plenary session at the conference, the host Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger said several people were killed in the attack.
Details about the incident, including when and where it happened, were not immediately known but U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the conference that the news of the assassination attempt reflects the challenges of restoring stability in Egypt. The vice president, appointed last week amid widespread cries for President Hosni Mubarak's ouster, has been working to initiate a government transition, and Clinton said it's important to support the Suleiman-led process.
[Update 11:49 a.m. in Cairo, 4:49 a.m. ET] Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei was in Cairo's Tahrir Square late Saturday morning. ElBaradei's National Association for Change movement told CNN he will make his way to a podium to speak to crowds.
[Update 10:49 a.m. in Cairo, 3:49 a.m. ET] President Hosni Mubarak met Saturday with Egypt's minister of finance, oil, trade and industry at the presidential palace Saturday, state-run Nile TV reported.
[Update 10:20 a.m. in Cairo, 3:20 a.m. ET] An Egyptian state-run news agency reported a gas pipeline has been set on fire in a suspected terrorist attack in Al-Arish.
A crowd of protesters gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square remained relatively peaceful mid-morning Saturday after occasional street battles broke out in the city overnight. The scene appeared calmer than in recent days, and traffic appeared to come back to life in Cairo.
Heavy gunfire broke out early Saturday morning around Tahrir Square.
Five human rights activists, including two from Amnesty International and one from Human Rights Watch, were released Friday by Egyptian military police, the two groups said in statements. They were among numerous people - including international reporters and Egyptian lawyers and activists - detained on Thursday in Cairo. Some of those detained remain in custody, according to the two groups' statements.
The death toll from the violent clashes in Cairo's Tahrir Square has reached 11, Egypt's Health Ministry reported Friday.
The U.S. Embassy in Egypt and the U.S. State Department issued a statement Friday indicating that several embassy vehicles were stolen in Cairo on January 28. The statement was in response to an online video that showed a white diplomatic van running into anti-government protesters near Tahrir Square. The joint statement said, "We have heard reports of their (stolen U.S. vehicles) use in violent and criminal acts."
A security force accompanied by a "gang of thugs" stormed the office of the Muslim Brotherhood's news website Friday and arrested the journalists, technicians and administrators present there, the group said on its website. Witnesses later saw those arrested taken to the Interior Ministry, the group said.
Mubarak's men key to US reform hopes in Egypt
Mubarak has so smothered potential political opposition that there is no clear alternative for the US as a bargaining partner, even if dealing with aging Mubarak stalwarts reduces US credibility with Egyptians fed up with the Mubarak era.
- AP
- Published: 19:34 February 5, 2011
Washington: Seeking reform in Egypt, the US increasingly is counting on a small cadre of President Hosni Mubarak's closest advisers to guide a hoped-for transition from autocracy to democracy.
It's a plan that relies on long relationships with military men and bureaucrats who owe their professional success to Mubarak's iron rule. To the regret of some US diplomats, it's also a plan that steers around the Muslim Brotherhood, the powerful Islamist political movement that almost surely would play a central role in any future popularly chosen government.
Not that Washington has much choice.
Mubarak has so smothered potential political opposition that there is no clear alternative for the US as a bargaining partner, even if dealing with aging Mubarak stalwarts reduces US credibility with Egyptians fed up with the Mubarak era.
The Obama administration's telephone diplomacy this past week was indicative of the American strategy to keep Egypt from tearing itself apart.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden spoke to Omar Sulaiman, Egypt's 74-year-old intelligence chief who became vice president last week. Defense Secretary Robert Gates chatted with his 85-year-old counterpart, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi. Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mike Mullen discussed the situation with Egypt's top military official, Lt. Gen. Sami Anan, 62. Another key figure is Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq, a 69-year-old former Air Force chief.
US diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website encapsulate part of the problem with trusting these men to be the head ushers of democratic and economic change.
Beyond the generational split with young protesters disgruntled by years of harsh unemployment, inequality and political repression, the Mubarak men belong to a military elite whose wealth and power are inextricably linked to the 82-year-old president.
"Egypt's military is in decline," a 2008 US cable says, summarising a series of conversations with academics and analysts. The memo cites a professor in Egypt as saying "the sole criteria for promotion is loyalty and the ... leadership does not hesitate to fire officers it perceives as being `too competent' and who therefore potentially pose a threat to the regime."
Yet the military's authority remains strong and its interests in Egypt vast. Mubarak built an army of almost a half-million men that holds large stakes in the water, olive oil, cement, construction, hotel and gasoline industries.
A diplomatic cable also describes large land holdings of the military along the Nile Delta and the Red Sea, and suggests that the top brass would not be served by important change toward democracy and freer markets.
Most analysts agree that the military "generally opposes economic reforms," according to the US diplomatic correspondence.
The exchanges describe an Egypt ripe for political unrest. A 2007 note from the US ambassador at time, Francis J. Ricciardone, said Mubarak's "reluctance to lead more boldly" was hurting his effectiveness.
Ricciardone singled out Egypt's elite 40,000-member counterterror police as he described a "culture of impunity." The ambassador noted that the Egyptian government shut down a human rights group that had helped the family of a detainee killed in 2003. The officers were exonerated of torture and murder charges.
The cables also provide glimpses of the difficult environment for Egypt's bloggers and journalists. During protests in Cairo this past week, pro-government mobs beat, threatened and intimidated reporters attempting to inform the world of the unfolding events in the country.
In one cable, an Egyptian blogger complained to the US Embassy after YouTube and Google removed videos from his blog apparently showing a Bedouin shot by Egyptian police and thrown on a garbage dump, and another one of a woman being tortured in a police station.
The cables contain mixed assessments of some of those being counted on to lead Egypt's transition after six decades when the country's four presidents all came from the officer corps.
Suleiman, referred to as the "Mubarak consigliere," comes out better than others. He is described as disappointed as far back as 2007 that he had yet to be named vice president. Yet on first glance, he seems an ideal candidate to guide Egypt through an unstable period.
At a time when Mubarak's son Gamal was being promoted as a future president, a US cable says Sulaiman "would at the least have to figure in any succession scenario."
"He could be attractive to the ruling apparatus and the public at large as a reliable figure unlikely to harbor ambitions for another multi-decade presidency," according to the cable.
But it is unclear what that will mean now as thousands of Egyptians demand Mubarak's immediate resignation.
There's little indication Sulaiman will show his longtime boss the door, even if Obama administration officials are discussing options that include having Mubarak step aside now for a transitional government headed by Suleiman.
"His loyalty to Mubarak seems rock-solid," a cable written four years ago concludes.
Under one proposal, Mubarak would hand his powers to his vice president, though not his title immediately, to give the ruler a graceful exit.
Sulaiman has offered negotiations with all political forces, including protest leaders and the regime's top foe, the Muslim Brotherhood. He's spoken of independent supervision of elections, loosening restrictions on who can run for president and term limits for leaders.
He has some support.
Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, a former UN atomic energy chief and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said he respects Sulaiman as a possible negotiating partner. Some protesters have backed the idea of Suleiman playing a leading role in the transition" others see him as too much of a Mubarak government figure and want him out, along with the president.
Then there's Tantawi, known among younger servicemen as "Mubarak's poodle," according to one informant. His unbending support for Mubarak is described in worse terms.
"`This incompetent defense minister"' who reached his position only because of unwavering loyalty to Mubarak is `running the military into the ground,"' a US diplomat wrote, relaying the assessment of an unidentified professor in Egypt.
Tantawi reached out to the demonstrators Friday by visiting the square that has been the rallying point for Cairo's protests. He held friendly but heated discussions, telling people that most of their demands have been met and they should go home. "The people and the army are one hand!" they chanted during Tantawi's brief stop.
Anan is largely respected among US officials. The cables spare him the harsh criticism doled out to Tantawi, who is lambasted in various memos as the chief impediment to modernising Egypt's military.
But the fear of American officials illustrated throughout the notes - and offered by the Mubarak government as its main excuse for resisting democracy - is the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood.
US officials say there have been no contacts with the hardline Islamist movement. It has formed the most organized opposition to Mubarak's three-decade autocracy but opposes much of the US agenda in the region, such as Arab-Israeli peace efforts.
"The specter of an MB presidency haunts secular Egyptians," a cable noted. Still, it said such a development was "highly unlikely" and that the military wouldn't support an extremist takeover.
But avoiding talks with the group could be a mistake for the US, if it means a missed opportunity for some influence with a group that could become a dominant force in Egypt's future.
The United States has confirmed discussions with Al Baradei, who has "captured the imagination of some section of the secular elite that wants democracy but is wary of the popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood," according to a February 2010 cable.
Al Baradei's biggest challenge would be mustering credibility among Egyptians on the streets, it predicted. The jury is still out on that question, even if the Muslim Brotherhood has expressed support for ElBaradei as an acceptable point-man for leading the pro-democracy movement. The military's view of him hasn't really been made clear.
Ultimately, the protests haven't made Egypt's post-Mubarak future any clearer. What's obvious now is that neither Mubarak will run in September elections. But no one knows how the military will react to possibly months more of instability.
"In a messier succession scenario," a 2008 cable noted, "it becomes more difficult to predict the military's actions."
"While mid-level officers do not necessarily share their superiors' fealty to the regime," it is "unlikely that these officers could independently install a new leader."
They military won't have to act alone, and no officials are warning of a military coup. But the military elite's reticence for change could prove a hindrance to democratic transformation.
US officials consistently have criticised the government's response to the crisis, and officials say Suleiman's outreach efforts have been too narrow and not credible enough to gain widespread support and usher in real democracy.
As for Mubarak, who said in an ABC television interview on Thursday that Egypt would slip into chaos if he didn't serve out his remaining seven months, the cables suggest he never really had a succession plan - long "the elephant in the room of Egyptian politics."
"Mubarak himself seems to be trusting to God and the inertia of the military and civilian security services to ensure an orderly transition," a 2007 cable said.
Stuart Ramsay, in Cairo, and Gary Mitchell
Key figures in Egypt's ruling party have stepped down, according to state television, as protesters continue to demand the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
:: Follow breaking developments here and LIVE at www.skynews.com/liveplus
Al Arabiya television retracted an initial report that Mr Mubarak had also quit as leader of the party.
But the party's secretary-general Safwat el-Sharif and Gamal Mubarak, Mr Mubarak's son, are said to have quit in a shake-up seen as a gesture to anti-government campaigners.
For 12 days they have been taking part in demonstrations in Cairo and other cities demanding that the embattled president resigns.
Protesters hurl rocks in Cairo on 'Departure Day' during minor street clashes
The 82-year-old, who has been in power for 30 years, has ignored the calls and has previously insisted he intends to serve out the remaining seven months of his term.
The popular uprising turned ugly earlier this week with violent street clashes between anti-government demonstrators and pro-Mubarak groups.
Earlier, state television reported opposition leaders were meeting with vice-president Omar Suleiman to discuss various proposals that would end in the leader's departure.
One option being considered by top officials would see Mr Mubarak remaining in office purely as a figurehead, with real power draining to the vice-presidency.
<a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=387c7539d6" >Sky News in Egypt</a>
The reports of a party shake-up may be a sign that steps towards such a compromise are being taken behind closed doors - but it is questionable how much weight it might carry with protesters.
Many of those gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square have told Sky News they will only be happy if Mr Mubarak gives up his leadership completely.
Friday's "day of departure" saw more than 100,000 demonstrators gathering peacefully in the area.
The military have been appealing for protesters to leave the area by Sunday and have put up barricades to prevent more from joining in.
Listen! Army chiefs, who have been tolerant of the protests of recent days, are thought to be keen for some form of normality to return to the capital after banks and shops were forced to close for days.
The upheaval of recent days is estimated to have cost hundreds of millions of pounds and state TV reported Mr Mubarak had held talks with key members of his cabinet about how to revive the economy.
Exports from Egypt fell 6% in January due to the unrest, the government has said.
Britons continue to flee the country, with a second Foreign Office-chartered flight taking off today from Cairo to London's Gatwick Airport with up to 165 passengers on board.
The Foreign Office advises against all but essential travel to Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor and Suez.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Middle East leaders to embrace democratic reforms in response to growing unrest in the region.
She told an international security conference in Munich that there was a "perfect storm" which made democratic change a "strategic necessity".
US president Barack Obama has called for a "transition period that begins now".
Frank Wisner, Mr Obama's special envoy for Egypt, has told the conference in Munich that Mr Mubarak must stay in power for the time being to steer the political transition.
Dominic Asquith, British Ambassador to Cairo, said time must be given for talks between opposing groups.
He told Sky News: "To get this orderly transition, you will need to yield space for the dialogue that is going on, and you need to be able give the space also to what the president himself, President Mubarak, has been saying about the legitimate demands of the protesters, about new steps for democracy, the peaceful transfer of power."
:: Some 1,000 people gathered for a march to the Egyptian embassy in London on Saturday in a show of solidarity to the protesters.
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