TODAY'S NEWS:

With Egypt in turmoil, Israeli PM says 3-decade-old ties, peace agreement must be preserved

JERUSALEM - Israel's prime minister said Sunday that his government is "anxiously monitoring" the political unrest in Egypt, his first comment on the crisis threatening a regime that has been one of Israel's key allies for more than 30 years.

Israeli officials have remained largely silent about the situation in Egypt, but have made clear that preserving the historic 1979 peace agreement is a paramount interest. The peace, cool but stable, turned Israel's most potent regional enemy into a crucial partner, provided security on one of its borders and allowed it to significantly reduce the size of its army and defence budget.

"We are anxiously monitoring what is happening in Egypt and in our region," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before his Cabinet's weekly meeting.

"Israel and Egypt have been at peace for more than three decades and our objective is to ensure that these ties be preserved. At this time, we must display responsibility, restraint and utmost prudence."

It was the first high-level comment from Israel on the Egypt protests, which began last week with disorganized crowds demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and have grown into the most significant challenge to Egypt's autocratic regime in recent memory.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak discussed the situation in Egypt with U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday, according to a statement from Barak's office. No details of the discussion were released.

Over the weekend, Israel evacuated the families of its diplomats from Cairo and security officials began holding urgent consultations.

Israel's primary concern is that the uprising could be commandeered by Egypt's strongest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, and its allies, who would presumably move Egypt away from its alignment with the West and possibly cancel the peace agreement with Israel.

"Israel has an interest in Egypt being democratic, but through a process that promises sustainability," said Dan Shueftan, director of the National Security Studies Center at Haifa University. "If you have a process that starts with a desire for democracy but then sees radicals take over, then the result at the end of the process is worse than what you had at the beginning."

The benefits to Israel of peace with Egypt have been significant.

In the three decades before the peace agreement, Israel and Egypt fought four major wars. Israel now spends 9 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence, Shueftan said — compared with 23 per cent in the 1970s, when a state of war with Egypt still existed.

Where Israel once deployed thousands of soldiers along the Egyptian frontier, today there are several hundred. This reduction allowed the Israeli economy to begin flowering in the years after the peace deal, he said.

Mubarak has also served as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.

If Egypt resumes its conflict with Israel, Israelis fear, it will put a powerful Western-armed military on the side of Israel's enemies while also weakening pro-Western states like Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Eli Shaked, a former Israeli ambassador to Cairo, offered a grim assessment Sunday in the daily Yediot Ahronot.

"The assumption at present is that Mubarak's regime is living on borrowed time, and that a transition government will be formed for the next number of months until new general elections are held," he wrote.

"If those elections are held in a way that the Americans want, the most likely result will be that the Muslim Brotherhood will win a majority and will be the dominant force in the next government. That is why it is only a question of a brief period of time before Israel's peace with Egypt pays the price," wrote Shaked.

Some in Israel have critically compared President Barack Obama's response to the crisis to that of President Jimmy Carter to the Iranian revolution in 1979. Obama has called on Mubarak to show restraint and pass unspecified reforms in Egypt.

"Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as 'the president who lost Iran,' which during his term went from being a major strategic ally of the United States to being the revolutionary Islamic republic," wrote the analyst Aluf Benn in the daily Haaretz. "Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who 'lost' Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled."

In the short term, Israel will face increased smuggling activities in the Sinai peninsula, where the authority of the Cairo government — never strong — has been further weakened by the unrest, said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli general.

Weapons, fuel and other goods enter the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which is subject to a partial Israeli and Egyptian blockade, through tunnels from the Sinai desert.

"They will now try to get in everything they couldn't get in before," Amidror said.

Israel captured Sinai in 1967 and then ceded it to Egypt in the 1979 peace deal. The area was demilitarized as part of the agreement.

For now, the unrest seems to have had the opposite effect. Gaza smugglers said the supply routes have been disrupted and that they have not received any merchandise from Egypt since Friday, apparently because of difficulties in transporting the goods across Egypt to the Gaza border. •

Fighter jets flew low over the crowd of tens of thousands of protesters defying a state-imposed curfew Sunday in Cairo's Tahrir Square. But many among the protesters insisted on standing their ground. •

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Egypt's Mubarak faces crisis, protest defies curfew

CAIRO (Reuters) – President Hosni Mubarak, clinging on despite mass popular demands for an end to his 30-year rule, met on Sunday with the generals who may hold the keys to Egypt's future, but in Cairo protesters defied a curfew.

As his key ally the United States called for an "orderly transition," Mubarak's disparate opponents, including the banned Muslim Brotherhood, rallied behind retired international diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei to lead possible talks with the army on organizing a handover of power to a national unity coalition.

"I ask of you patience, change is coming in the next few days," Baradei told thousands of demonstrators on Cairo's Tahrir Square after dark. "You have taken back your rights and what we have begun, cannot go back."

He added: "We have one main demand -- the end of the regime and the beginning of a new stage, a new Egypt."

"The people want the regime to fall!" thousands chanted as troops looked on patiently from their U.S.-built battle tanks.

Baradei, 68, won a Nobel peace prize as head of the United Nations' nuclear body. Though little known to many Egyptians, he had hoped to run in a presidential election in September.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fox News: "We want to see an orderly transition so that no one fills a void.

"We also don't want to see some takeover that would lead not to democracy but to oppression and the end of the aspirations of the Egyptian people."

For a week, since Egyptians inspired by the overthrow of the aging strongman in Tunisia began a push for change, it has been unclear who might emerge as an alternative to Mubarak and, more widely, to the military class which has run Egypt since 1952.

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

A senior figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Islamist group that has long seemed the strongest single force against Mubarak, said it backed ElBaradei as negotiator.

The Brotherhood has stayed in the background although several of its senior officials have been rounded up. The government has accused it of planning to exploit the protests.

Some of its leaders walked free from jails on Sunday.

As many as 10,000 people protested in Tahrir Square, a rallying point in the center of Cairo, to express anger at poverty, repression, unemployment and corruption -- themes that are rumbling across the Arab world after first Tunisia and now the most populous Arab state Egypt have been plunged in unrest.

As the curfew started and was ignored, warplanes and helicopters flew over the square. By late afternoon more army trucks appeared in a show of military force but no one moved.

"Hosni Mubarak, Omar Suleiman, both of you are agents of the Americans," shouted protesters, referring to the appointment on Saturday of intelligence chief Suleiman as vice president, the first time Mubarak has appointed a deputy in 30 years of office.

It was the position Mubarak, 82, held before he become president and many saw the appointment as ending his son Gamal's long-predicted ambitions to take over and as an attempt to reshape the administration to placate reformists.

Mubarak held talks with Suleiman, Defense Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Chief of Staff Sami al-Anan and others.

Clearly those in Tahrir Square did not wish to see Mubarak's ruling structure replaced by a military line-up featuring his closest associates. "Mubarak, Mubarak, the plane awaits," they said. There was also a big protest in Alexandria.

SHOCKWAVES AROUND MIDDLE EAST

The turmoil, in which more than 100 people have died, has sent shock waves through the Middle East where other autocratic rulers may face similar challenges, and unsettled financial markets around the globe as well as Egypt's allies in the West.

In Tunisia, the detonator of the regional movement, an exiled Islamist leader was welcomed home by thousands on Sunday. In Sudan, Egypt's southern neighbor, police beat and arrested students taking part in anti-government protests in Khartoum.

In Egypt, the military response to the crisis has been ambivalent. Troops now guard key buildings after police lost control of the streets, but have neglected to enforce a curfew, often fraternizing with protesters rather than confronting them.

It remains to be seen if the armed forces will keep Mubarak in power, or decide he is a liability to Egypt's national interests, and their own. It was also unclear if Mubarak had decided to talk with the generals or if he was summoned by them.

It was Tunisian generals who persuaded former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to flee last month after weeks of protests.

In Suez, on the canal, one senior local officer, Brigadier Atef Said said his troops would give protesters a free voice:

"We will allow protests in the coming days," he told Reuters. "Everyone has the right to voice their opinion."

The crisis deepened on Sunday after police had disappeared from the streets. Egyptians faced lawlessness on the streets with security forces and citizens trying to stop looters.

Through the night into Sunday, Cairo residents armed with clubs, chains and knives formed vigilante groups to guard neighborhoods from marauders after the unpopular police force withdrew following the deadly clashes with protesters.

Security sources said police would be back on Monday.

TANKS SPRAYED WITH SLOGANS

In surreal scenes, soldiers from Mubarak's army stood by tanks covered in anti-Mubarak graffiti: "Down with Mubarak. Down with the despot. Down with the traitor. Pharaoh out of Egypt."

Asked how they could let people scrawl anti-Mubarak slogans on their mostly American-made vehicles, one soldier said: "These are written by the people, it's the views of the people."

Egypt's armed forces -- the world's 10th biggest and more than 468,000-strong -- have been at the heart of power since army officers staged the 1952 overthrow of the king. It benefits from about $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid.

The army appears to be showing restraint and there is no talk at this time about halting U.S. aid to Egypt, Clinton said.

The government has interfered with Internet access and mobile phone signals to try and disrupt demonstrators' plans.

On Sunday, it ordered pan-Arab channel Al Jazeera to shut down and cut off its local broadcasts.

The tumult was affecting Egypt's tourist industry and the United States and Turkey said they were offering evacuation flights Other governments advised people to leave Egypt.

The United States and European powers were busy reworking their Middle East policies, which have supported Mubarak, turning a blind eye to police brutality and corruption in return for a bulwark against first communism and now militant Islam.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was closely watching events in Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979.

"This is the Arab world's Berlin moment," said Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics, comparing the events to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. "The authoritarian wall has fallen, and that's regardless of whether Mubarak survives."•

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ElBaradei calls for Mubarak to leave

January 30, 2011

Egyptians have reservations about ElBaradei

(Reuters) - Egyptians on the streets of Cairo said on Monday they had reservations about opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, who has offered to act as transitional leader to prepare Egypt for democratic elections.

ElBaradei, former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), returned to Egypt on the eve of the protests which swept the country on Friday, when tens of thousands of people called for the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the IAEA, ElBaradei and the powerful Muslim Brotherhood said on Sunday he had a mandate from opposition groups to make contact with the army and negotiate a government of national unity.

At least one opposition party, the Arab nationalist Karama Party of Hamdin Sabahi, has rejected ElBaradei outright as a transitional figure, saying he was trying to jump on the bandwagon of the popular uprising.

ElBaradei joined protesters at the hub of anti-Mubarak protests in central Cairo on Sunday.

ElBaradei, 68, began overt opposition to Mubarak on his return to Egypt in February 2010 and won a widespread following among the young and the middle classes.

But the Egyptian authorities harassed his supporters and ElBaradei lost much credibility through his long absences abroad. The official media tried to ridicule him, saying he knew nothing about Egypt and had no political experience.

Some elements of the government's campaign appear to have stuck. "ElBaradei won't do. He doesn't have the experience here and he's a little weak," said Khaled Ezzat, 34, an information technology engineer who had joined the evening vigil in Tahrir Square.

"NOT NEUTRAL" ON IRAN

Omar Mahdi, a sales manager, said: "I'm not convinced by ElBaradei, even as a transitional figure, he hasn't really been present in the country."

Some of the protesters objected to ElBaradei on the grounds that he was too close to the United States, despite the frictions between him and the U.S. administration over the Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs when he was head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog body.

"ElBaradei's positions toward other Arab countries, and toward Iran and North Korea, were not neutral... So I don't find him very acceptable," said Walid Abdel-Mit'aal, 36, who works for a public sector company.

"He would follow Mubarak in the same policies and would take U.S. aid," he added, reflecting an anti-American strand which was largely absent in the first four days of protests.

ElBaradei's cosmopolitanism -- he lived abroad for years and speaks fluent English -- may be an advantage among some Egyptians but it is also a source of suspicion among others.

The protesters in Tahrir Square suggested several alternatives to ElBaradei as transitional leader, including Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, a popular former foreign minister, the president of the constitutional court or the president of the supreme administrative court.

Others said they were open-minded and what mattered was changing the constitution to ensure that no one man clings to power as long as Mubarak, who took office in 1981.

"ElBaradei is a very acceptable option because he will not stay," said Islam Ashraf, 24, a quality operations coordinator. "But we're not really interested in faces. What matters to us is having another system," he said. •

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Muslim Brotherhood Wants War With Israel

Mohamed Ghanem, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, calls Egypt to stop pumping gas to Israel and prepare the Egyptian army for a war with it’s eastern neighbor. Speaking with Iranian television station Al-Alam, Mohamed Ghanem blamed Israel for supporting Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Ghanem also said that the Egyptian police and army won’t be able to stop the Muslim Brotherhood movement. •

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Egypt's Military Makes Show of Force Amid Chaos in Cairo

CAIRO -- Fighter jets swooped low over Cairo Sunday in what appeared to be an attempt by the military to assert control of a city beset by looting, armed robbery and anti-government protests.

Minutes before the start of a 4 p.m. curfew, at least two jets made multiple passes over downtown, including a central square where thousands of Egyptians were calling for the departure of President Hosni Mubarak.

Police could be seen returning to some streets nearly two days after they virtually disappeared, creating a security vacuum only partially filled by the presence of army troops backed by tanks at key sites around this city of 18 million people.

The army made no attempt to disperse some 5,000 protesters gathered at Tahrir Square, which protesters have occupied since Friday afternoon in violation of a nighttime curfew. The military has been generally welcomed by demonstrators across Cairo, unlike the widely despised police.

Nobel Peace laureate and democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei appeared in the square around 7 p.m., live television footage showed.

On the first day of trading across the Mideast after a weekend of violent protests, nervous investors drove stocks down sharply, and crowds filled Cairo International Airport, desperate and unable to leave.

Banks were closed on orders from Egypt's Central Bank, and the country's stock market was shut on what is normally the first day of the trading week.

Gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates. Gangs of young men with guns and large sticks smashed cars and robbed people in Cairo.

An unprecedented Internet cutoff remained in place after the country's four primary Internet providers stopped moving data in and out of the country early Friday in an apparent move by authorities to disrupt the organization of demonstrations blaming Mubarak's regime for poverty, unemployment, widespread corruption and police brutality.
ElBaradei called on American television for Mubarak to step down, telling CBS' "Face the Nation" that, "He absolutely has to leave ... The American government cannot ask the Egyptian people to believe that a dictator who has been in power for 30 years will be the one to implement democracy."

Egyptian mobile-phone networks were back up but with text-messaging widely disrupted. Because of its ability to reach many people with a single message, text messaging has been a tool of protesters across the world.

The official death toll from five days of growing crisis stood at 74, with thousands injured.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo told its citizens in Egypt to consider leaving the country as soon as possible, and said it had authorized the voluntary departure of dependents and non-emergency employees, a display of Washington's escalating concern about the stability of its closest Arab ally.

Private tour groups and corporations began trying to evacuate their clients and expatriate employees. But dozens of flights were canceled and delayed.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. expects that the protests in Egypt will lead to free and fair elections as part of an "orderly" transition to "real democracy."

"I want the Egyptian people to have a chance to chart a new future," she said. "It's not a question of who retains power ... It's how are we going to respond to the legitimate needs and grievances expressed by the Egyptian people."

Israel's prime minister told his Cabinet that he was "anxiously following" the crisis, saying in his first public comments on the situation that Israel's three-decade-old peace agreement with Egypt must be preserved.

After a night of violence in many cities across Egypt, the army sent hundreds more troops and armored vehicles onto the streets starting Sunday morning.

State television showed Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi in green fatigues outside the state TV headquarters in downtown Cairo, speaking with soldiers and civilian onlookers.

Truckloads of hundreds of police poured back into Cairo neighborhoods Sunday afternoon and took up positions on the streets.

In some spots, they were jeered by residents who chanted anti-police slogans and demanded that they only be allowed to deploy jointly with the military.

In one part of Tahrir Square, soldiers working with civilian protester volunteers were even checking IDs and bags of people arriving at the square, saying they were searching for weapons and making sure plainclothes police did not enter the square.

"The army is protecting us, they won't let police infiltrators sneak in!" one volunteer shouted.

Then, as the curfew loomed, the jets roared over the Nile and toward Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo, where thousands of protesters have gathered each day to demand the end of the administration.

The jets made several passes over the square, dropping lower every time and setting off alarms in parked cars.

Some protesters clapped and waved to them while others jeered.

"This is terrorism, they are trying to scare the people with the planes and the tanks. They are trying to make people afraid and leave the square," said Gamal Ahmed, a 40-year-old air-conditioning technician.

Lines of army tanks jammed a road leading into Tahrir, and a military helicopter hovered overhead.

Massive trucks and cranes moved 3-foot-high (meter-high) concrete barriers in front of the foreign ministry in central Cairo near the Nile.

Troops in full combat gear and half a dozen armored personnel carriers guarded one of the largest symbols of the government.

Mubarak, 82, perpetuated the overriding role of military men in Egyptian politics by naming his intelligence chief, former army general Omar Suleiman, to the new role of vice president on Saturday. Ahmed Shafiq, the outgoing civil aviation minister and Mubarak fellow former air force officer, was named prime minister.

State TV Sunday showed images of Mubarak during what it said was a visit to the country's military command center. The president looked somber and fatigued in his first public appearance since he addressed the nation late Friday to promise reform and annouce the dismissal of his Cabinet.

The brief footage appeared designed to project an image of normalcy.

Egyptian security officials said that overnight armed men fired at guards in gun battles that lasted hours at the four prisons including one northwest of Cairo that held hundreds of militants. The prisoners escaped after starting fires and clashing with guards.

Those who fled included 34 members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best organized opposition group. The Muslim Brotherhood's lawyer, Abdel-Monaem Abdel-Maqsoud, told The Associated Press the 34 were among scores rounded up by authorities ahead of the large anti-government demonstrations on Friday. The escapees included at least seven senior members of the group.

The security officials said several inmates were killed and wounded, but gave no specific figures. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information with the media.

The officials told The Associated Press that army troops were hunting for the escaped prisoners, in some cases with the help of the police. State television also showed footage of what it said was dozens of prisoners recaptured by the army troops, squatting on dirt while soldiers kept watch over them.

In the southern city of Assiut, officials said riot police stormed the city's main prison to quell a prison riot, using tear gas and batons against inmates. An Associated Press reporter saw army tanks were deployed outside the prison, on bridges straddling the Nile and at the police headquarters.

Thousands of Alexandrians met to pray in downtown Alexandria, a Mediterranean port city that is a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood. After prayers, the crowd marched towards the city's old mosque to pray for the souls of those who died in the protests.

Egyptian mobile networks were back up after days of cutoffs but with text-messaging widely disrupted. Blackberry Messenger and mobile Internet services were operating sporadically.

The pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera said that Egyptian authorities ordered the closure of its Cairo news hub overseeing coverage of the country's massive street protests, denouncing the move as an attempt to "stifle and repress" open reporting.

The Qatar-based network has given nearly round-the-clock coverage to the unprecedented uprising against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and had faced criticism by some government supporters and other Arab leaders as a forum to inspire more unrest. •


The New York Times reported Sunday that the White House "has refrained from calling publicly for Mr. Mubarak to step down ... because it worried about losing its leverage over him and about contributing to a political vacuum in Egypt, which could be filled by extremist, anti-American forces." •

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Thousands of inmates, including Muslim militants, break out of jails amid turmoil in Egypt