This Article is From Feb 05, 2011

Egypt unrest: Friday deadline ends, Hosni Mubarak holds on

Egypt unrest: Friday deadline ends, Hosni Mubarak holds on
Cairo: Cracks in the Egyptian establishments's support for President Hosni Mubarak began to appear Friday as jubilant crowds of hundreds of thousands packed the capitol's central Tahrir Square to call for his ouster, this time unmolested by either security police or uniformed Mubarak loyalists.

While ousting Mr. Mubarak remained the principal objective of the throngs in the square, leaders of the protest movement began grappling with the question of what might come next, hoping to avoid repeating history and handing power to another military-backed president for life.

After signs of a looming crackdown Thursday, Mr. Mubarak's forces appeared to pull back Friday, and on the 11th day of the atmosphere in Tahrir Square reverted from embattled to jubilant once again. Protesters have remained in uncontested control of the square since about 5:00 a.m. Thursday, when they won a 14-hour war of stones and Molotov cocktails against gangs of Mubarak loyalists.

On Friday they abandoned their makeshift barriers to chant, pray and sing the national anthem around the center of the square, where newcomers carried in bags of bread and water. Tens of thousands of others demonstrated in Alexandria and Suez.

Enthusiastic cheers rose up several times at the appearance of Amr Moussa, easily the most popular politician in Egypt and a major figure in its political establishment. He became famous as a straight-talking and charismatic foreign minister, until Mr. Mubarak moved him to the less threatening position of head of the Arab League.

Mr. Moussa never broke publicly with the president or ruling party, but an aide confirmed that Mr. Moussa's decision to walk into the square was a tacit endorsement of the revolt, and in a television interview he opened the door to serving in a new government. "We want you, we want you," crowds chanted.

Throughout the day demonstrators pulled out cellphone cameras to snap photos of well known actors, musicians and Islamic religious authorities who came to join them. Mohamed Rafah Tahtawy, the public spokesman for Al Azhar -- the center of Sunni Muslim learning and Egypt's highest, state-run religious authority -- said he was resigning to join the revolt.

"My position is a position of support to the revolution all the way," he said. "I am part of it till the last drop of my blood."

The jubilant feeling in the square was in stark contrast to the dark sense of foreboding that had pervaded the capital yesterday, as foreign journalists and human rights workers were beaten and harassed by Mubarak supporters and apparently rounded up by security forces -- seemingly in preparation for an all-out assault on the square by Mubarak supporters.

As of Friday about 30 human rights workers remained missing after they were taken from the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre. Some had been working on compiling public list of those detained in the protests and organizing for their legal defense. Among the missing was a prominent American rights advocate, Dan Williams of Human Rights Watch.

Mohamed Elbaradei, the former United Nations diplomat who opposition groups have selected as their front man, said nine were abducted leaving a meeting at his home. There were many reports of missing journalists.

Wael Ghonim, a top Google executive in the Middle East and a leader of the young Internet activists who started the revolt, has been missing since he was detained 10 days ago during an earlier round of protests.

In the opening stages of what promises to be a protracted round of negotiations on the future of Egypt, Mr. ElBaradei said in a news conference at his home near Cairo that the opposition was calling for Mr. Mubarak to turn over power to a counsel of two to five members who would run the country until elections within a year.

Only one member would come from the military, Mr. ElBaradei said, adding that the armed forces' most important task now is to "protect Egypt's transition period in a smooth manner."

"We have no interest in retribution," he said. "Mubarak must leave in dignity and save his country."

Mohamed Beltagui, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist group that had been the major opposition in Egypt until the secular youth revolt, said that the organization would not run a candidate in any election to succeed Mr. Mubarak as president.

He said his members wanted to rebut Mr. Mubarak's argument to the West that his iron-fisted rule was a crucial bulwark against Islamic extremism. "It is not a retreat," he said in an interview at the the group's informal headquarters in the square. "It is to take away the scare tactics that Hosni Mubarak uses to deceive the people here and abroad that he should stay in power."

Mr. Beltagui, who represents the brotherhood on an opposition committee to negotiate a transitional government, said the group wanted a "civil state," not a religious one. "We are standing for a real democracy, with general freedom and a real sense of social justice."

Like many others in the square, Mr. Beltagui said he was not worried that the military might back a new dictator to succeed Mr. Mubarak. He said the determination of the protesters would forestall that, and moted that a religious leader who appeared to back away from some of the protesters democratic demands was booed from a makeshift stage in Tahrir Square.

Nor was he worried about new violence from Mubarak supporters. "They would be crazy," he said.

The military, the crucial force in controlling the Egyptian streets since the protesters routed the police, continued to seek neutral ground in the standoff between the president and he protesters. But there were small signs of shifts in its positions. The battle for Tahrir Square finally ended before dawn Thursday when the military intervened by firing into the air and the ground, scattering the Mubarak supporters, and they fired their guns later in the afternoon to break up new skirmishes.

Then Friday morning the military for the first time began screening people entering the square for weapons, a role previously filled by the protesters themselves. Military paratroopers, an elite force, rolled concertina wire across a main road leading to the square, and lines of protesters waiting to enter through military security snaked for hundreds of yards through the day.

The defense minister, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, appeared in the square -- the first member of the ruling government elite to do so -- to inspect the troops stationed around the Egyptian museum. Protesters, grateful that the military has not joined the security police or pro-Mubarak gangs in attempting to crush them, cheered.

They quickly formed a hand-holding barrier around the area of the square where Mr. Tantawi was walking to ensure that no Mubarak-supporting provocateurs tried to incite violence to provoke a backlash.

Mr. Mubarak, meanwhile, showed no sign of stepping down. Rumors swirled that Egyptian intellectuals were devising a plan for Mr. Mubarak to ease toward retirement by delegating all of his authority until the end of his term to his vice president, Omar Suleiman.

But in a television interview, Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, a Mubarak loyalist, ruled out any such plan. "Having Mubarak as president is a source of security for the country," he said. "I rule out accepting the proposal of having the president authorize his vice-president."

.