Embattled Egyptian president expected to speak after protests escalate
CAIRO — President Hosni Mubarak's rule is at an end and he should not seek re-election, President Barack Obama has told the Egyptian leader through a special envoy, according to American diplomats.Obama's counsel was revealed as Mubarak prepared to deliver his own message to Egypt after at least 1 million people rallied across the country for him to step down.
Al Arabiya television said late Tuesday that Mubarak would announce he won't run in elections scheduled in September. There was no official confirmation. Al Arabiya also said Vice President Omar Suleiman had started meetings with representatives of parties.
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..Sources told NBC News that Mubarak would offer "a good solution."
The New York Times reported that former U.S. ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner delivered Obama's message. The Times said Wisner told Mubarak that Obama was not sending a blunt demand to step aside now, but offering firm counsel that he should make way for a reform process that would culminate in free and fair elections in September for a new Egyptian leader.
The back channel message, authorized directly by Obama, appeared to tip the administration beyond the delicate balancing act it has performed in the last week — resisting calls for Mubarak to step down even as it has called for an “orderly transition” to a more politically open Egypt, the Times said.
Mubarak wanted to stay in office and continue to make small changes, touting them as progress, a senior U.S. official told NBC News, but Wisner reinforced the point that the Egyptian president cannot hold on until the next election.
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.News of the message came as Cairo's Tahrir, or Liberation, Square was jammed with at least a quarter-million people, ranging from lawyers and doctors to students and jobless poor, the crowd spilling into surrounding streets. Crowd estimates varied widely. Many defied a government transportation shutdown to make their way from rural provinces.
Crowds also demonstrated in Alexandria, Suez and in the Nile Delta in the eighth and biggest day of protests against Mubarak by people fed up with years of repression, corruption and economic hardship.
"He goes, we are not going," chanted a determined but peaceful crowd of men, women and children as a military helicopter hovered over the sea of people in the square, many waving Egyptian flags and banners.
They sang nationalist songs, danced, beat drums and chanted the anti-Mubarak slogan "Leave! Leave! Leave!" Organizers said the aim was to intensify marches to get the president out of power by Friday.
A stream of protesters arrived in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square at checkpoints guarded by protesters and the army, which promised Monday night that it would not fire on protesters.
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Protesters, who kept vigil in the square through the night in defiance of a curfew, vowed to continue their campaign until the 82-year-old Mubarak quits.
The United Nations human rights chief, Navi Pillay, said Tuesday that up to 300 people may have been killed in the unrest, with more than 3,000 injured so far.
Meanwhile, two Egyptian policemen accused of torturing to death an anti-corruption activist who became a cause celebre escaped from a prison in Alexandria, security and legal sources said. One of the driving forces behind the protests was a Facebook group set up by activists enraged at Khaled Said's death.
'New Egyptians'
Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said Tuesday that Mubarak must leave the country before any dialogue can start between the opposition and the government.
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"There can be dialogue but it has to come after the demands of the people are met and the first of those is that President Mubarak leaves," he told Al Arabiya television, saying the dialogue would involve transitional power arrangements and dissolving parliament.
Speaking to NBC News' Brian Williams, ElBaradei added that the protests had created a generation of "new Egyptians."
"They have confidence, they have hope, they have dignity," he added. "They feel that they have been reborn from being slaves into human beings."
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.State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley tweeted, "As part of our public outreach to convey support for orderly transition in #Egypt, Ambassador [Margaret] Scobey spoke today with Mohammed #ElBaradei."
Video: ElBaradei excited for future of ‘New Egyptians’
State Department officials told NBC News that Scobey's conversation with ElBaradei was one of several conversations with opposition leaders.
One of the country's oldest political parties said in a statement Tuesday that opposition groups had agreed to form "a national front," Al-Jazeera reported. The Wafd Party said Mubarak "has lost legitimacy," according to the report, which added that the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist group also said it wouldn't deal with the embattled president.
Protesters in the streets echoed those sentiments.
"The only thing we will accept from him is that he gets on a plane and leaves," said 45-year-old lawyer Ahmed Helmi.
It was unclear with whom Suleiman, the vice president, was negotiating.
Khaled Bassyouny, a 30-year-old Internet entrepreneur, said it was time to escalate the marches. "It has to burn," he said. "It has to become ugly. We have to take it to the presidential palace."
NBC News reported that two military surplus stores in Cairo had been looted. Mubarak's home had been barricaded with concrete blocks and razor wire, a military official added.
Human Rights Watch said some looters were in fact undercover policemen who supported Mubarak, looking to fuel fears of instability and thus popular approval of autocratic rule, The Washington Post reported.
Some hospitals said they received several injured looters who were carrying police identification cards, Peter Bouckaert, emergency director at Human Rights Watch, told the Post.
'Murderous president'
Two stuffed dummies representing Mubarak were hung from traffic lights at Cairo's Tahrir Square. On their chests was written: "We want to put the murderous president on trial."
The faces of the dummies were covered with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters' accusation that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, which continues to be seen by most Egyptians as their country's archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.
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Text NEWS to 67622 to receive mobile alerts ..Advertise AdChoicesAdvertise AdChoicesAdvertise AdChoices.But Al-Jazeera's Dan Nolan said in a later post that the situation in the square seemed largely peaceful, saying it "feels kinda like an Egyptian version of Woodstock."
Mubarak would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East.
The loosely organized and disparate movement to drive him out is fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant.
After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the overthrow of Tunisia's president last month took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a relentless and once unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million people — the region's most populous country and the center of Arabic-language film-making, music and literature.
Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood at the roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous winged building housing dozens of departments of the country's notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.
More world news Reports: Mubarak to say he won't seek re-election Updated 2 minutes ago 2/1/2011 8:54:23 PM +00:00 Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is expected to say Tuesday he will not seek re-election, a course President Barack Obama urged him to follow, according to media reports. Full story
.Updated 109 minutes ago 2/1/2011 7:07:28 PM +00:00 NYT: U.S. scrambles to size up ElBaradei Jordan's king fires government in wake of protests Egypt debt rating downgraded by S&P NBC's Richard Engel answers questions about Egypt ..For days, army tanks and troops have surrounded the square, keeping the protests confined but doing nothing to stop people from joining. The guns of many of the tanks pointed out from the square.
All roads in and out of the flashpoint cities of Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura and Fayoum were also closed, security officials said.
They said thousands of protesters gathered in Alexandria, Suez, the southern province of Assiut, the city of Mansoura north of Cairo, and Luxor, the southern city where some 5,000 people protested outside its iconic Ancient Egyptian temple on the east bank of the Nile.
'The succession is already under way'
Meanwhile, foreigners continued to leave the country, though at least 4,500 were still stranded at Cairo's airport, NBC News reported. One airport official said 18 charter flights carrying 1,500 passengers left early Tuesday, with the U.S. organizing nine flights out.
Latest on Egypt from World Blog U.S. tells Mubarak he must go Full story UNICEF envoy joins call for Mubarak to step down Obama may speak after Mubarak Government says antiquities are safe U.S. reaches out to ElBaradei ..Also, the State Department announced that all non-essential embassy personnel were leaving the country.
Saudi Arabia has evacuated 14,000 of its citizens, Antara News reported.
Political analysts predicted it was not a matter of whether Mubarak would step down, but when and how.
Advertise AdChoicesAdvertise AdChoicesAdvertise AdChoices."The succession is already under way," said Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The important thing now is to manage Mubarak's exit, which must be as graceful as possible at this point. For honor's sake, the brass won't have it any other way."
The military, which has run Egypt since it toppled the monarchy in 1952, will be the key player in deciding who replaces him and some expect it to retain significant power while introducing enough reforms to defuse the protests.
Video: Egypt army avoiding ‘Tiananmen’ moment (on this page) The military pledged not to fire on protesters in a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling.
Military spokesman Ismail Etman said the military "has not and will not use force against the public" and underlined that "the freedom of peaceful expression is guaranteed for everyone."
He added the caveats, however, that protesters should not commit "any act that destabilizes security of the country" or damage property.
NBC News, msnbc.com staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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