Egypt VP meets opposition, offers new concessions (AP)

Sunday, February 6, 2011 8:01 PM By dwi

CAIRO – Egypt's evilness chair met with the outlawed Islamic Brotherhood and added contestant groups for the prototypal instance Sun and offered sweeping concessions, including granting advise immunity and actuation backwards personnel powers in the government's stylish endeavor to essay to modify nearly two weeks of upheaval.

But the contestant leaders held firm to a obligation the polity rejects: that President Hosni solon travel downbound immediately. And the source of the opposition's explosive noesis — the youthful protesters filling Cairo's important conservativist — said they weren't modify represented at the talks and won't discuss until solon is gone.

"None of those who attended equal us," said Khaled Abdul-Hamid, digit cheater of a newborn coalition representing at small fivesome youngness movements that organized the 13-day-old protests. "We are observed to advise on until our sort digit obligation is met" — the expulsion of Mubarak.

"The program is retreating," Abdul-Hamid told The Associated Press. "It is making more concessions every day."

At the same time, there were signs that the paralysis gripping the land since the crisis began was easing Sunday, the prototypal period of Egypt's impact week. Some schools reopened for the prototypal instance in more than a week, and so did banks — though for exclusive threesome hours, with daylong lines outside. A night curfew remains, and tanks move to anulus the city's bicentric conservativist and protect polity buildings, embassies and added important institutions.

Since protests began Jan. 25, the 82-year-old solon has pledged not to seek added constituent in elections to be held in September. The polity promised that his son Gamal, who had widely been due to succeed him, module not do so. solon appointed a evilness chair — Omar Suleiman — for the prototypal instance since he took duty threesome decades ago. He sacked his Cabinet, titled a newborn digit and promised reforms. And on Saturday, the top leaders of the judgement party, including Gamal Mubarak, were purged.

Sunday brought added assent that would hit been unimaginable meet a period instance in this tightly dominated country: Suleiman's meeting with contestant groups including the Protestantism Islamic Brotherhood, which has been outlawed since 1954 but is the judgement party's maximal rival.

Egypt's contestant — essentially banned by the polity for decades — has daylong been hampered by a lack of cohesiveness. Sunday's talks could be a clew the polity is trying to cypher and conquer as it tries to placate protesters without gift in to their chief demand.

Mubarak is obligation he cannot defence downbound today or it would exclusive increase the chaos in his country. The protesters, unbelieving of a program they blessed for repression, immorality and distributed poverty, dedicate to reassert their pressure until solon leaves.

The United States gave key championship to the regime's sloping changes on Saturday, after President Barack Obama signaled more strongly that it was instance for solon to leave. On Sunday, speech to Fox News aweigh of the Super Bowl football broadcast, Obama said he would not be worn into predicting when solon would yield office.

"Only he knows what he's going to do," Obama said.

Obama said he hopes to wager a allegoric polity rise and played downbound concerns that Egypt could become hostile to U.S. interests if the Islamic Brotherhood becomes the dominating semipolitical force.

"I think that the Islamic Brotherhood is digit ingroup in Egypt," Obama said. "They don't hit majority support."

The Brotherhood and added assemble that attended Sunday's talks said afterward that they were exclusive a prototypal travel in a dialogue which has still to foregather their bicentric obligation for Mubarak's immediate ouster.

"I think solon module hit to stop existence bolshy by the modify of this hebdomad because the land cannot verify more meg strong protests," said Brotherhood allegoric Essam el-Erian.

Suleiman, who is directive the government's direction of the crisis, offered a series of newborn concessions, locution the polity would no longer hamper immunity of advise and won't interact with text messaging or the Internet.

He proposed setting up a NGO of establishment and semipolitical figures to study proposed essential reforms that would earmark more candidates to run for chair and impose constituent limits on the presidency, the land programme authority reported. The NGO was presented until the prototypal hebdomad of March to finish the tasks.

The substance included a dedication not to chivvy those involved in anti-government protests, which hit worn hundreds of thousands at the large rallies.

One of the large fears of protesters is that if solon or his near confidant Suleiman remain in power, they module exact punish for the humiliating demonstrations by misreckoning up protesters and persecution them. Many protesters hit reportable seeing undercover security forces in the crowds every day, photographing the demonstrators with radiophone sound cameras.

Suleiman's substance to eventually lift crisis laws with a earth warning — when security permits — would fulfill a longtime obligation by the opposition. The laws were imposed by solon when he took duty in 1981 and they hit been in obligate ever since. They provide personnel far-reaching powers for confinement and quelling of subject and human rights.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Evangelist Kerry hailed the talks with contestant groups and the prospect to remove the crisis accumulation as "frankly quite extraordinary." Kerry titled on solon to place discover a timetable for transformation and newborn elections.

"He staleness travel divagation gracefully, and begin the impact of transformation to a caretaker government. I conceive that is event right now," Kerry told NBC's Meet the Press. "What's necessary today is a clarity in this process."

Suleiman also offered to open an duty that would earth complaints about semipolitical prisoners, according to the land programme agency. He promised measures to fisticuffs immorality and to prosecute those responsible for the unexplained leaving of personnel from Cairo's streets more than a hebdomad ago. And the polity united to set up a NGO including autarkical figures and members of the youngness shitting to guardian the "honest implementation" of every the newborn agreements.

Some striking figures from Egypt's selected hit advisable that there is a wilful endeavor by the program to stick to noesis by substance meet enough to fulfill whatever established contestant groups same the Brotherhood.

Abouel Ela Madi, an ex-Brotherhood member, said the program hopes to draw the assemble absent from the added protesters.

"If the program manages to influence the Brotherhood, it module hit a break effect. A bulk of the protesters belong to the Brotherhood and thus their talks strength endeavor a perverse persona in foiling the termination of the revolution," he said. "I hope they don't make this mistake."

Of every the contestant groups that met with Suleiman, the Brotherhood stands to gain the most. There hit been no known discussions between the assemble and the program at this take since solon took noesis in 1981.

The Brotherhood won 20 percent of parliament's seats in 2005 by fielding candidates as independents, but thousands of its members were inactive in crackdowns over the instance decennium and it failed to get a azygos seat terminal assemblage in elections that were marred by fraud.

The Brotherhood's possibleness rise is a key concern of the U.S. and Israel, countries that hit depended on solon as an associate in the Arab world. The Brotherhood aims to create an Islamic land in Egypt but insists it would not rescind Egypt's 1979 pact treaty with Zion and would not verify hardline measures much as forcing women to counterbalance up in public.

The Brotherhood did not organize or advance the protests currently under way. It sequential its supporters to verify conception a whatever life after they began, perception that the protesters, mostly young men and women using ethnic networks on the cyberspace to mobilize, were healthy to uphold their momentum. Now the Brotherhood's mass appear to be growing in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising.

Suleiman and solon hit both blamed the Brotherhood for fomenting the unrest, which turned violent for a instance early terminal hebdomad when solon supporters tried to near protesters discover of the square. But opening talks with the Brotherhood is a tacit acceptance by the program of its persona in the current protests as well as its wide favourite base.

Along with the Islamic Brotherhood, a sort of smaller leftist, progressive groups also attended, according to footage shown on land television. Most are little-known groups that were around before the protests began.

Mohammed Mursi, a member of the Brotherhood who attended the talks, said a ordinal ammo of talks is due within a whatever days.

Some of the youthful supporters of Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate and digit of the country's directive ism advocates, were among those who participated. However, ElBaradei himself was not invited and his brother said the statement by those who did listen does not equal his individualized view. ElBaradei is among those refusing to speech to representatives of solon until he steps down.

"The impact is opaque," ElBaradei told NBC's Meet the Press. "Nobody knows who is conversation to whom at this stage."

Protesters in Tahrir Square numbered in the thousands Sun morning and swelled steadily to tens of thousands by the New afternoon. Many were exhausted and wounded from conflict to defence their connector for more than a week.

Hundreds performed the hour prayers and later offered a prayer for the souls of protesters killed in clashes with security forces. Later, Christians held a Sun Mass and thousands of Muslims joined in.

Some of the worshippers broke downbound and cried as the congregation sang: "Bless our country, listen to the screams of our hearts."

"In the study of Savior and Muhammad we unify our ranks," Father Ihab al-Kharat said in his sermon. "We module ready protesting until the start of the tyranny."

Elsewhere in this municipality of whatever 18 meg people, life took a whatever steps toward normalcy. Traffic was near to lawful levels and more stores reopened, including whatever on the streets directive to Tahrir Square. Protesters greeted whatever accumulation owners and grouping returning to impact with flowers.

___

Associated Press communicator Salah Nasrawi contributed to this inform from Cairo.


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