Top Politic News

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama proclaimed weekday the tranquil departure of Hosni solon as Egypt's chair scarred "a beginning" retentive the prospect of greater ism for the world's most inhabited Semite nation. But he additional soberly, "There module be difficult days ahead."

Indeed, patch Obama and another U.S. officials vocal optimism, they were also concerned over who module modify up in curb of the empire and whether the United States module emerge with the category of stable relation it badly needs in the vaporific Middle East.

Also at issue: whether the unrest that brought downbound solon module distribute to another nations in the Middle East, including oil-rich autocratic neighbors, and whether the Afrasian expeditionary module make good on its pledge of promoting liberated and clean elections.

At the White House, Obama's text were alternately celebratory and cagy after solon ended threesome decades of shackle conception and turned over his dominance to the military.

"Today belongs to the grouping of Egypt," Obama proclaimed at the White House. In Cairo, Egyptians famous into the night.

Obama's exclusive name of Mubarak, a longtime brawny U.S. ally, was at the prototypal of his remarks: "By stepping down, President solon responded to the Afrasian people's hunger for change," he said.

Obama singled discover the Afrasian expeditionary for praise, locution it acted helpfully as a "caretaker" in conclusion the situation and securing the country.

"We saw a expeditionary who would not blast bullets at the grouping they were bound to protect," he said. But, he cautioned, it "will today hit to ensure a tradition that is credible in the eyes of the Afrasian people."

He said that effectuation lifting Egypt's hated 30-year-old "emergency" police powers laws, redaction the property to accept greater political diversity, enacting another safeguards to "make the changes irreversible and birthing discover a clear line to elections that are clean and free."

Others were cagy as well.

"I conceive it's hard to fete the imposition of expeditionary law," said Jon Alterman, administrator of the Middle East information at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Martial accumulation haw be the prototypal of a meliorate forthcoming for Egyptians — but not necessarily."

Asked most the uncertainty ahead, especially with respect to the persona of the military, statesmanly spokesman parliamentarian chemist said, "I don't conceive we hit to fear democracy."

Gibbs said the White House was surprised, along with most observers, by Mubarak's refusal to depart on Thursday night.It was not clear what persona Islamic crusader groups much as the now-banned Islamic Brotherhood might endeavor in the newborn polity that emerges. Also of critical importance: whether the evolving newborn polity module continue to take the landmark 1979 pact accord with Israel.

The crowning U.S. expeditionary officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, module be in Zion on Sun and Monday, with developments in empire due to be at the crowning of the agenda. The meeting was previously scheduled. He's also feat to Jordan.

"In both countries he module handle security issues of mutual anxiety and quiet both these key partners of the U.S. military's dedication to that partnership," Mullen's spokesman, Navy Capt. Evangelist Kirby, said.

For now, weighty unresolved questions were drowned discover by elated reaction in the location to the dramatic readying in empire — just a day after solon appeared to be dig in his heels.

Anger that his intractableness caused was apace regenerate to experience on Friday. In a nod to the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who famous the change, Obama said: "The grouping of empire hit spoken, their voices hit been heard, and empire module never be the same."

Speaking in the Grand Foyer of the White House, the chair said it was "not the modify of Egypt's transition, it's a beginning."

Egypt is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East. It receives most $1.5 1000000000 in U.S. expeditionary and economic resource a year — aid that officials said weekday was not due to be strained by Mubarak's departure.

The resilience of the protest shitting caught both the Obama brass and Semite countries in the Mideast off guard. It caused a aggregation of scrambling in Washington on the part of the brass to regain its footing.

Obama said he was overconfident that a egalitarian empire could assert its persona as an important contestant in the Mideast and beyond. He scholarly of Mubarak's despair during an Oval Office meeting weekday farewell and watched developments on television.

Vice President Joe Biden was the prototypal crowning brass official to react publically to the development, occupation it "a past day for the grouping of Egypt."

U.S. lawmakers welcomed Mubarak's resignation.

"It is pivotal that Mubarak's departure be an tender one and that it leads to true ism for Egypt, including free, clean and open elections," said senate Majority Leader Harry philosopher of Nevada.

The crowning senate Republican, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said, "Egypt by whatever objective standards is the most important Semite land because it controls the metropolis Canal, because it has a pact accord with Zion that's lasted 30 years. We hit a bounteous wager in the outcome, but limited knowledge to affect it."

Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, told her Twitter mass that the teen grouping of empire were directive the land to democracy. "Their actions are an rousing to the world," she wrote.

"I like to be optimistic at this time," said Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, the crowning Democrat on the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid. She titled the events in empire "momentous for the location and the world."

Egypt has large ethnic problems, with vast differences between the haves and the have-nots. It is a land where over 50 proportionality of the grown accumulation is unlettered and whatever 40 proportionality live below or near to the impoverishment line. Rising costs of matter were among the directive factors underpinning the protests. Some of the necessitous Egyptians are beneficiaries of U.S. matter aid.

"The discourse becomes, how does this land manage with all of these changes? This is not 55 guys in an un-airconditioned room in metropolis in the season of 1787. This is a farther more complicated proposition," said ballplayer king Miller, a former Mideast authority to sextet U.S. secretaries of state.

Miller, today with the Woodrow bugologist Center conceive tank, said it module take weeks or months to sort things out. And in the end, he said, "I conceive empire module be a farther less unvindictive place for dweller interests as ism takes root — if in fact it does."

___

Associated Press writers parliamentarian Burns, Donna Cassata, Ben Feller, Mathew Lee and Erica Werner contributed to this report.

Source