Islamist plans Tunisia return; Yemenis call on Saleh to quit
 

CAIRO, Jan 27, (Agencies): An Egyptian protester was shot dead by police Thursday as nationwide protests raged into a third day and pro-democracy activists vowed to step up their campaign to oust President Hosni Mubarak.
Mohamed Atef, 22, died when he was shot in the head by police during an exchange of fire between Bedouin protesters and security forces in the north Sinai town of Sheikh Zuwayed, witnesses and relatives said.
His death brings to seven the number of people confirmed killed — five protesters and two policemen — since demonstrations against Mubarak’s autocratic rule, inspired by the groundbreaking “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia, erupted on Tuesday.

Medics said more than 100 people have been injured while a security official told AFP that around 1,000 protesters had been arrested in three days of protests.
The protests in Egypt have sent shockwaves across the region and prompted Washington to prod its long-time ally on democratic reforms.
Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party was holding talks on Thursday, according to party members, “to evaluate the situation.”

Events on the street sent jitters Thursday through Egypt’s stock exchange, which suspended trading temporarily after a drop of 6.2 percent in the benchmark EGX 30 index, a day after it fell six percent.
The stock market closed with a drop of over 10 percent on Thursday.
Members of the pro-democracy youth group April 6 Movement said they would continue to take to the streets, defying a ban on demonstrations announced by the Egyptian authorities on Wednesday.
“To continue what we started on January 25, we will take to the streets to demand the right to life, liberty, dignity and we call on everyone to take to the streets ... and to keep going until the demands of the Egyptian people have been met,” the group said.

Opposition groups circulated SMS messages and posted appeals on social networking site Facebook for fresh demonstrations “to demand the right to live with freedom and dignity.”
“We’ve started and we won’t stop,” one demonstrator told AFP.
Heavy security in Cairo, however, appeared to have kept the protesters at bay, with no sign of the crowds that had flooded the streets on the previous two days and the capital remaining calm.
But in the cities of Suez and Ismailiya, hundreds of protesters clashed with police Thursday in a third straight day of anti-government demonstrations, an AFP photographer and witnesses said.
In Suez, east of Cairo at the mouth of the Suez Canal, anti-riot police fired rubber-coated bullets, tear gas and water canon at hundreds of people gathered to demand the release of some 75 people arrested on Tuesday and Wednesday.

An AFP photographer said protesters later hurled molotov cocktails at a fire station in the city, setting it ablaze.

In Ismailiya to the north, witnesses reported that police were on Thursday firing tear gas at demonstrators, who were responding by throwing rocks.

Around a dozen people were arrested before the demonstration began.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog turned Egyptian reform campaigner, said he expected big demonstrations across Egypt on Friday, and that it was time for President Hosni Mubarak to go.
ElBaradei, 68, left Vienna, where he lives, for Cairo on Thursday to join a growing wave of protests against Mubarak inspired by Tunisia’s overthrow of their authoritarian president.

He told Reuters he would not lead the street rallies, but that his role was “to manage the change politically”.
The Arabic news station Al Arabiya quoted ElBaradei, who held a number of rallies to campaign for political reform in his homeland last year, as saying he was ready to take power for a transitional period if protesters asked him to do so.

ElBaradei, who arrived in Cairo, might provide a focus for a protest movement that so far has no figurehead, although many activists resent his long absences over past months.
In a telephone interview, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency called for peaceful protests, and said any use of force by the authorities would “backfire badly”.
“People broke the culture of fear and, once you break the culture of fear, there is no going back,” ElBaradei said. “I think we will definitely see a change coming.”

ElBaradei, who suggested he might run for president if democratic and constitutional change was implemented, made clear that he believed Mubarak should not stand for another term.
“He has served the country for 30 years and it is about time for him to retire,” he said. “I think he has to declare that he is not going to run again.”

“I expect that we will see a new team, and a new set-up, and a new democratic structure.”
The next presidential election is due in September, and Mubarak, 82, has not said if he will run. Egypt’s political rules make it hard for anyone other than the ruling party’s candidate to stand, let alone win.

Tunisia

An exiled Islamist leader prepared to return to Tunisia, as thousands rallied in the country on Thursday to call for old regime politicians to be ousted after the fall of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
There were protests in the capital Tunis as well as in Sidi Bouzid, a poor rural town in central Tunisia where rallies against Ben Ali’s 23-year authoritarian regime began last month and grew into a national uprising.
“God is great! We will stay loyal the blood of the martyrs of the revolution!” the Sidi Bouzid protesters chanted — a reference to the dozens killed in a bloody crackdown by Ben Ali that failed to stem the revolt.
Tunisia’s main trade union, the UGTT, which played a key role in the movement against Ben Ali, has refused to recognise the caretaker government installed to prepare for elections after the president fled on Jan 14.
The leadership of the UGTT was meeting Thursday to take a “final decision” on whether or not to accept proposed changes to the cabinet, which has been clouded by controversy because Ben Ali’s ministers still hold key posts.

The reshuffle could see some holdovers from the Ben Ali cabinet replaced.
Meanwhile Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the popular Ennahdha (Awakening) Islamist movement, prepared to return to Tunisia on Sunday after more than 20 years of forced exile, a spokesman for the movement in Paris told AFP.
“He will not return triumphantly, claiming a place in the government, but as a simple citizen,” said the spokesman, Houcine Jaziri.
Ghannouchi still officially has a life sentence hanging over him from 1992 for plotting against Ben Ali but in practice convicted exiles have been able to return freely in recent days.
He founded Ennahdha in 1981 on the model of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and says it is now a moderate force similar to Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) that will take part in elections.
The ripples of the Arab world’s first popular revolt in recent history have been felt across the region, where difficult social and economic conditions have created widespread popular discontent against veteran regimes.

Yemen
Thousands of Yemenis, apparently inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, staged a mass demonstration on Thursday calling on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to quit after being in power since 1978.
“Enough being in power for (over) 30 years,” chanted protesters in demonstrations staged by the Common Forum opposition in four different parts of the capital Sanaa.
In reference to the ouster of Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the demonstrators said he was “gone in just (over) 20 years.”
But Yemeni Interior Minister Motahar Rashad al-Masri ruled out any resemblance between the protests in Yemen and the public outcry in the North African country that led to Ben Ali’s departure.
“Yemen is not like Tunisia,” he told AFP, adding that Yemen was a “democratic country” and that the demonstrations were peaceful.
But the slogans chanted in Thursday’s Sanaa demonstration which lasted for two hours were firm in demanding Saleh’s departure.
“No to extending (presidential tenure). No to bequeathing (the presidency),” chanted demonstrators, insisting that it was “time for change.”
“Common Forum go ahead. It is time for change,” proclaimed banners carried in the protests.
Opposition Al-Islah (Reform) party MP Abdulmalik al-Qasuss echoed the demands of the protesters when he addressed them.
“We gather today to demand the departure of President Saleh and his corrupt government,” he said.
A Common Forum activist said that the staging of the demonstration in four separate parts of the capital was aimed at distracting the security forces.
One area chosen for the protest was outside Sanaa University.
Security measures at the demonstrations appeared relaxed, but were tight around the interior ministry and the central bank.
Saleh’s ruling General People’s Congress (GPC), meanwhile, organised four simultaneous counter demonstrations which were attended by thousands of the government’s backers.
“No to toppling democracy and the constitution,” the president’s supporters said on their banners.
On Saturday, hundreds of Sanaa University students held counter protests on campus, with some calling for Saleh to step down and others for him to remain in office.

US response
The United States sharpened its response to political upheaval and brutal crackdowns in Egypt, telling its closest ally in the Arab world it must respond to its people’s yearnings for democracy as the largest political protests in years swept Cairo streets.
But with no clear picture emerging of a democratic and pro-Western alternative to the three-decade rule of Egypt’s authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak, it was unclear how hard the United States was willing to press its case.
A day after delivering a measured response to Egypt’s demonstrations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Wednesday that Egypt had to adopt democratic and other reforms and allow peaceful protests. She told Cairo to lay off social media sites like Facebook and Twitter even as activists are using them to organize street gatherings and destabilize the government.
The White House declined a direct opportunity to affirm support for Mubarak, who traveled to Washington to meet President Barack Obama just four months ago. Asked if the administration still backed Mubarak, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs would say only: “Egypt is a strong ally.”
The tougher tone came as the US struggles to confront an explosion of instability in the Middle East as Arabs from Tunisia to Yemen rebel against decades of political repression. Adding to the confluence of crises is the emergence of an Iranian-backed militant movement as Lebanon’s dominant force and potentially embarrassing revelations creating new obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The day before Ben Ali fled into exile in Saudi Arabia, Clinton delivered a stark warning to Arab leaders across the Middle East that they faced possible revolt if they failed to address rampant social problems, repression and corruption that have alienated their populations, particularly the educated youth. Foundations of development and progress in the region were “sinking into the sand,” she warned.
But having spent billions of dollars supporting its few Arab friends for decades, the United States is nearly as large a target for the unrest as the authoritarian regimes under siege.
US officials won’t paint the problem as one of democracy versus loyalty, but Washington’s labored approach to the protests in different countries illustrates a complicated blend of political idealism and realpolitik. It also points up the unpredictability of the tinderbox of Arab populism.
Egypt represents the greatest challenge because of its strategic position bridging two continents, leadership status in the Arab world, lasting peace with Israel and the possibility of a hardline, Islamist movement filling the vacuum were Mubarak to be deposed.
The United States has urged peaceful political change in Egypt for years, but has tolerated routine police, judicial and human rights abuses there. It has provided Egypt with tens of billions of dollars in aid since it made peace with Israel in 1978. Last year, the country got more than $1.5 billion in economic support and military assistance from the US.
Unlike Tunisia, a second-tier US ally, Egypt has been the bulwark of American influence in the Middle East and served as an economically impoverished but politically powerful intermediary in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and beyond. When Mubarak last visited the White House in September it was to help relaunch moribund peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Jordan, the only other Arab state to make peace with Israel, is similarly vital to US interests. Standing beside Clinton at the news conference, Judeh played down the chances of protests like those Tunisia and Egypt erupting in his country. He allowed that Jordanians have vented over rising oil and food prices, but maintained his country has the political openness to allow debate and dissent.
That may not be the case in Yemen, a nation plagued by corruption, inequality and political divisions and which has emerged as a main battleground against al-Qaeda. Yemen’s government under the weak president Ali Abdallah Saleh fails most democratic litmus tests, but it has allowed US drone strikes on suspected terrorists on its soil and become a key counterterror partner. It is unclear how instability and upheaval there would serve American interests.