President Mubarak toes US line, but defiant tone throws White House

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/01/obama-pressures-mubarak-to-step-down


President Mubarak toes US line, but defiant tone throws White House

Egyptian leader agreed to quit after pressure from Obama, but Washington uncertain if he should go sooner rather than later

* Chris McGreal in Washington
* The Guardian, Wednesday 2 February 2011

VIDEO:
US president says he spoke to Hosni Mubarak after the Egyptian president's announcement to serve out his remaining term, and told Mubarak an orderly transition of power in Egypt 'must begin now' Link to this video

The White House was last night anxiously assessing whether its strategy of pressuring Hosni Mubarak to resign later this year will be enough to end the mass protests against his rule and allow a negotiated transition of power.

Mubarak's televised address came after a White House envoy told the Egyptian leader that Obama could no longer back him and wanted him to announce that he will not stand for re-election at a ballot expected in September. But Mubarak's defiant tone, and the hostile response from the protesters demanding he resign immediately, threw the White House's attempts to manage political change in Egypt in to question.

The US president watched the speech in the situation room after his special envoy, Frank Wisner, a former US ambassador to Cairo who is close to Mubarak, conveyed Obama's message.

Wisner was just one of an array of contacts used by the White House – including military, businessmen and intelligence officials – in an attempt to bring about negotiations over political reform that will lead to free elections.

Washington has continued to insist that it does not favour any of the political actors in Egypt, and it has clearly abandoned Mubarak as a long-term prospect, but it risked appearing to be trying to extend his power by months when many in his own country want him to go immediately.

Elliot Abrams, a hawkish former official in the Bush administration who previously supported Mubarak, said the Egyptian leader's speech was too little too late.

"I can't see how he stays in power eight more months. If he'd made this announcement a week ago, much less a month or two months ago, this whole crisis would never have happened. But to do it now, I think he's got to step down," he said.

"Wisner was given the job of delivering the black hand to Mubarak and I hope that what he said was not that you need to not run in September. I hope that what he said and continues to say is that it won't work. For your own benefit, for that of your family, for that Egypt, you've just got to go now."

Administration advisers say that the White House remains uncertain whether to press Mubarak to go sooner and make way for an interim government.

On Monday, the White House called in experts to give advice on the way forward, including discussions on potential interim leaders, after being caught ill-prepared by events in Egypt.

Among them was Joel Rubin, a former state department Egypt desk officer now with the National Security Network thinktank. He said that administration officials described a multilayered approach that included pushing a public message that the US is not attempting to decide who rules Egypt while making clear to Mubarak that there had to be substantial reforms.

"There was a decision to get across the public message that … they aren't playing the Bush administration game of deciding who runs which country in the Middle East," he said. "At the same time they also using unofficial, informal channels … [to] get messages across that are pretty compelling, that there has to be a real serious transition to democracy, quickly."

Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation thinktank, who was also at the White House meeting, said the administration had yet to reach a decision on when Mubarak should go .

"They don't see Mubarak as being a constructive player moving forward but formally they don't have a mechanism to tell him to go," he said. "I'm talking to the highest levels of government and I sense they're still deliberating what to do about Mubarak."

Clemons said that the administration is also scrambling to assess and build relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group with substantial political support in Egypt.

"There's a concern right now about not having much intelligence, much outreach. It came up in the meeting how important it was to begin engaging, that these leaders were not terrorists, that this is not al-Qaida … and that they are going to be significant in any equation but they're not going to dominate the equation," he said.

Clemons said one of the problems the White House had to grapple with was a lack of planning for how to deal with a popular revolt against Mubarak.

"I don't think any serious scenario building, contingency plans, thought about political transitions was done in the state department, in the intelligence department, in the Pentagon," he said."It's really shocking given the number of years that there's been debate about Mubarak surviving, about the succession to his son, about the growing Muslim Brotherhood. I know from senior state department types that there was no scenario planning done. Who knows why. They've been caught without those resources," he said.