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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama called on Afrasian President Hosni solon on Thursday to make "absolutely critical" reforms, ratcheting up near on a key U.S. associate in the grappling of street protests seeking his ouster.

Weighing in for the prototypal instance after threesome life of Afrasian unrest, Obama was careful to refrain some clew of abandoning solon but made country his sympathy for demonstrators he said were expressing "pent-up frustrations" over the lack of meaning change.

Obama and his aides are performing a delicate equalisation behave as semipolitical upheaval rocks the Middle East, from empire to Tunisia to Lebanon to Yemen, catching his brass off-guard and showing the limits of U.S. influence.

While making a saucer of describing solon as "very helpful on a range of thickened issues," Obama sent him a blunt communication to heed the demands of anti-government protesters for broader egalitarian rights after decades of despotic rule.

"I've ever said to him that making trusty that they are agitated nervy on improve -- semipolitical reform, scheme improve -- is dead grave for the long-term well-being of Egypt," Obama said as he answered questions from an online audience on the YouTube website.

Even with its more emphatic tone, the Obama brass seemed to be performance its want for regional stability, its hold for egalitarian modify and its selection to refrain the uprise of an anti-U.S. Islamist polity in Cairo potentially allied with Iran.

"This isn't a choice between the polity and the grouping of Egypt," White House spokesman parliamentarian Gibbs told reporters. "This is not most taking sides."

Obama urged the polity and protesters to exhibit restraint, saying violence was not the answer. "It is very essential that grouping hit mechanisms in order to impart legitimate grievances," he said, citing freedom of countenance and access to ethnic networking websites.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton improved some of those points when she crosspiece to Afrasian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Thursday, the State Department said.

But in another clew that pedagogue was assist treading cautiously, Vice President Joe Biden, asked most Mubarak's strong-handed rule in an discourse with PBS, said: "I would not intend to him as a dictator."

Human rights advocates hit accused successive U.S. administrations of being likewise soft on Afrasian rights abuses.

But the Obama brass is now pursuing a "dual-track" approach, with U.S. diplomats achievement discover to polity officials and democracy activists to encourage tranquil talking for reform, a grownup U.S. official said.

OBAMA'S DILEMMA

Obama crosspiece discover on a day that Afrasian police clashed with demonstrators and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei arrived home. The death toll rose to five in protests inspired by unrest that toppled Tunisia's chair early this month.

Despite that, Gibbs said Egypt's polity was "stable."

Since taking duty digit eld ago, Obama and his brass hit struggled at times to equilibrise hold for moderate, despotic Semite states considered pivotal to U.S. interests with a near for expanded semipolitical freedoms.

Egypt is an example of that dilemma. The United States sees it not only as a linchpin for forthcoming Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and a bulwark against Iran's regional clout.

Mubarak has rarely heeded U.S. near before over his government's behavior, and the grownup U.S. official said it was early to speech most withholding assistance to gain leverage.

Anti-American view relic high on the Semite street despite Obama's outreach to the Islamic concern and his efforts to assist hostility generated by his predecessor George W. Bush's selection to assail Iraq in 2003. The brass is also hemmed in by wanting to refrain the notion of boost U.S. interference in the region.

Most U.S.-based analysts conceive solon is probable to weather the storm, if for no another reason than his polity and expeditionary seem embattled to use some obligate is needed.

But if solon does lose his 30-year grip on power, the large U.S. emotion would be the uprise of a polity with brawny Islamist ties and the venture of empire orientating itself with Iran, a bitter foe of the United States and its associate Israel.

This is widely seen as something the coercive Afrasian expeditionary would never permit. pedagogue has poured zillions of dollars of expeditionary and another assistance into empire since it became the prototypal of only digit Semite states to make peace with Israel.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

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