Cairo:
In a test of wills that seems to be approaching a critical juncture, tens of thousands of people converged anew on Tahrir Square on Tuesday, seeking to muster a million protesters demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. But there were reports that the government was seeking to choke off access to the capital to thwart the demonstrators' ambitions for their biggest show of strength so far.
Mr. Mubarak's authoritarian government shook on Monday night, as the Egyptian Army declared that it would not use force against the protesters and, in an apparent response, Mr. Mubarak's most trusted adviser offered to talk with the opposition.
Those statements, along with the damage to Egypt's economy, appeared to weaken Mr. Mubarak's grip on power just two weeks after a group of young political organizers called on Facebook for a day of protest inspired by the ouster of another Arab strongman, in Tunisia.
A Western diplomat, who spoke in return for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said Monday night's moves were believed to be part of choreographed maneuvers by the most senior people around Mr. Mubarak to set the stage for his eventual exit.
If that belief is borne out by events, however, it remained to be seen whether protesters would be satisfied by Mr. Mubarak's departure alone or would demand more far-reaching change, as demonstrators in Tunisia did after its strongman president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled in mid-January.
By Tuesday morning, as a formal curfew that many have ignored was lifted, tens of thousands of people flocked to the central Tahrir Square -- a plaza that, for some outsiders at least, has assumed some of the symbolic importance of Tiananmen Square in Beijing during pro-democracy demonstrations there in 1989.
But, in marked contrast to those events, the military's promise not to use force has emboldened demonstrators sensing that the political landscape of the country has shifted as decisively as at any moment in Mr. Mubarak's three decades in power. The military seemed to aggressively assert itself as an arbiter between two irreconcilable forces: a popular uprising demanding Mr. Mubarak's fall and his tenacious refusal to relinquish power.
Overnight, soldiers seemed to have boosted their presence around the square, with tanks and armored personnel carriers guarding some of its entrances and stringing concertina wire to block off some streets. The black-clad police -- reviled by many protesters as a tool of the regime -- also seemed to have been deployed in larger numbers, though not on the same scale as when the protests started a week ago.
The crowd offered a remarkable tapestry of Egypt's many-layered society, from the most westernized to the most traditional, from the young to old men with canes. Seeking to impose some kind of order, the military set up checkpoints to search people entering the square, presumably for hidden weapons, separating them by gender so that women could be patted down only by other females.
The Associated Press reported that authorities had sought to isolate Cairo -- Egypt's teeming capital -- from the rest of the country, throwing up roadblocks on main highways and cancelling train and bus services to prevent demonstrators from reaching the city. There was no immediate confirmation of the report.
In a further token of the paralysis of normal business in Cairo, news reports said, the stock exchange announced that it would remain closed for a fourth successive day on Wednesday. Thousands of foreigners have fled the capital, around 1,200 of them on evacuation flights arranged by the American Embassy.
Around eight more planeloads of Americans are set to leave the country on Tuesday, officials said, taking diplomatic families and private citizens to Istanbul, Athens, Cyprus and Frankfurt.
How far Mr. Mubarak is offering to bend in negotiations remains to be seen, and given the potential ambiguities of both statements it is too soon to write off the survival of his government. In Washington, the State Department on Monday dispatched a veteran diplomatic troubleshooter, Frank Wisner, a former ambassador in Cairo and elsewhere, to meet Mr. Mubarak and other officials.
In a further diplomatic twist, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey -- whose country is often held up as a model of Western-style democracy within a predominantly Islamic nation -- urged Mr. Mubarak to "listen to people's outcries and extremely humanistic demands" and to "meet the freedom demands of people without a doubt," Reuters reported.
The week-old uprising here entered a new stage about 9 p.m. on Monday when a uniformed military spokesman declared on state television that "the armed forces will not resort to use of force against our great people." Addressing the throngs who took to the streets, he declared that the military understood "the legitimacy of your demands" and "affirms that freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody."
A roar of celebration rose up immediately from the crowd of thousands of protesters still lingering in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square, where a television displayed the news. Opposition leaders argued that the phrase "the legitimacy of your demands" could only refer to the protests' central request -- Mr. Mubarak's departure to make way for free elections.
About an hour later, Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak's right-hand man and newly named vice president, delivered another address, lasting just two minutes.
"I was assigned by the president today to contact all the political forces to start a dialogue about all the raised issues concerning constitutional and legislative reform," he said, "and to find a way to clearly identify the proposed amendments and specific timings for implementing them."
The protesters in the streets took Mr. Suleiman's speech as a capitulation to the army's refusal to use force against them. "The army and the people want the collapse of the government," they chanted in celebration. Even some supporters of Mr. Mubarak acknowledged that events may have turned decisively against him once the military indicated its support for the protesters, especially given the historical independence of the Egyptian military."
There were some dissident voices, however. In Alexandria on Tuesday, young women handed out leaflets to motorists in Alexandria urging people not to attend Tuesday's demonstrations. "Do not turn yourselves over to outside forces trying to create chaos in our country," the leaflets said. The argument seemed unlikely to dissuade protesters who had set up tents in front of the Misr train station in central Alexandria.
Mr. Mubarak's previously unquestioned authority had already eroded deeply over the preceding three days. On Friday, hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilian protesters routed his government's heavily armed security police in a day of street battles, burning his ruling party's headquarters to the ground as the police fled the capital. On Saturday, Mr. Mubarak deployed the military in their place, only to find the rank-and-file soldiers fraternizing with the protesters and revolutionary slogans being scrawled on their tanks.
And on Sunday, leaders of various opposition groups met to select Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to negotiate for them in anticipation of talks with Mr. Mubarak about forming a transitional unity government -- an idea Mr. Mubarak's surrogate embraced Monday.
Mr. Mubarak's government came under pressure from another front as well: the swift deterioration of the economy. The protests, and the specter of looting that followed the police withdrawal, have devastated tourism, the source of half of Egypt's foreign income, and shut down transportation.
Ragui Assaad, an economist at the University of Minnesota, said the potential collapse of the economy was like a gun to Mr. Mubarak's head. "If it's a complete shutdown like this, and it lasts for a few weeks, that is going to be really serious," he said.
On Monday foreign embassies scrambled to book charter flights to evacuate their citizens as thousands of people jammed the Cairo airport trying to flee the country. International companies, including those in the vital oil and natural gas industries, shuttered their operations.
As late as midday, however, Mr. Mubarak seemed to be trying to wait out the protesters. He appeared on television soberly shaking the hands of a new roster of cabinet ministers in a public demonstration that even though protesters may control the streets, he remained head of state.
He reinstated about half of the cabinet he had dismissed three days ago in a bid to soothe the unrest. Indeed, in a sign that he may be digging in for a prolonged battle, he added the position of deputy prime minister to the duties of his powerful defense minister, Mohammed Tantawi, who will serve under Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander he had appointed as prime minister.
The most notable cabinet change was in the official in charge of suppressing the protests. Mr. Mubarak replaced Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, criticized by human rights advocates for tolerating torture and other police abuses and widely reviled here. He was succeeded by Mahmoud Wagdy, a retired general who had been the head of the Cairo criminal investigations division and a former head of prisons.
The street protests were gearing up again, but with a notably different face. For the first time the Muslim Brotherhood stepped to the fore as the protest organizers called their most reliable foot soldiers as reinforcements.
Though outlawed here because of its Islamist ideology, the Brotherhood is the only group in Egypt able to call out a large and disciplined network of experienced organizers, and their presence on Monday was unmistakable.
Mr. Mubarak's authoritarian government shook on Monday night, as the Egyptian Army declared that it would not use force against the protesters and, in an apparent response, Mr. Mubarak's most trusted adviser offered to talk with the opposition.
Those statements, along with the damage to Egypt's economy, appeared to weaken Mr. Mubarak's grip on power just two weeks after a group of young political organizers called on Facebook for a day of protest inspired by the ouster of another Arab strongman, in Tunisia.
A Western diplomat, who spoke in return for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said Monday night's moves were believed to be part of choreographed maneuvers by the most senior people around Mr. Mubarak to set the stage for his eventual exit.
If that belief is borne out by events, however, it remained to be seen whether protesters would be satisfied by Mr. Mubarak's departure alone or would demand more far-reaching change, as demonstrators in Tunisia did after its strongman president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, fled in mid-January.
By Tuesday morning, as a formal curfew that many have ignored was lifted, tens of thousands of people flocked to the central Tahrir Square -- a plaza that, for some outsiders at least, has assumed some of the symbolic importance of Tiananmen Square in Beijing during pro-democracy demonstrations there in 1989.
But, in marked contrast to those events, the military's promise not to use force has emboldened demonstrators sensing that the political landscape of the country has shifted as decisively as at any moment in Mr. Mubarak's three decades in power. The military seemed to aggressively assert itself as an arbiter between two irreconcilable forces: a popular uprising demanding Mr. Mubarak's fall and his tenacious refusal to relinquish power.
Overnight, soldiers seemed to have boosted their presence around the square, with tanks and armored personnel carriers guarding some of its entrances and stringing concertina wire to block off some streets. The black-clad police -- reviled by many protesters as a tool of the regime -- also seemed to have been deployed in larger numbers, though not on the same scale as when the protests started a week ago.
The crowd offered a remarkable tapestry of Egypt's many-layered society, from the most westernized to the most traditional, from the young to old men with canes. Seeking to impose some kind of order, the military set up checkpoints to search people entering the square, presumably for hidden weapons, separating them by gender so that women could be patted down only by other females.
The Associated Press reported that authorities had sought to isolate Cairo -- Egypt's teeming capital -- from the rest of the country, throwing up roadblocks on main highways and cancelling train and bus services to prevent demonstrators from reaching the city. There was no immediate confirmation of the report.
In a further token of the paralysis of normal business in Cairo, news reports said, the stock exchange announced that it would remain closed for a fourth successive day on Wednesday. Thousands of foreigners have fled the capital, around 1,200 of them on evacuation flights arranged by the American Embassy.
Around eight more planeloads of Americans are set to leave the country on Tuesday, officials said, taking diplomatic families and private citizens to Istanbul, Athens, Cyprus and Frankfurt.
How far Mr. Mubarak is offering to bend in negotiations remains to be seen, and given the potential ambiguities of both statements it is too soon to write off the survival of his government. In Washington, the State Department on Monday dispatched a veteran diplomatic troubleshooter, Frank Wisner, a former ambassador in Cairo and elsewhere, to meet Mr. Mubarak and other officials.
In a further diplomatic twist, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey -- whose country is often held up as a model of Western-style democracy within a predominantly Islamic nation -- urged Mr. Mubarak to "listen to people's outcries and extremely humanistic demands" and to "meet the freedom demands of people without a doubt," Reuters reported.
The week-old uprising here entered a new stage about 9 p.m. on Monday when a uniformed military spokesman declared on state television that "the armed forces will not resort to use of force against our great people." Addressing the throngs who took to the streets, he declared that the military understood "the legitimacy of your demands" and "affirms that freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody."
A roar of celebration rose up immediately from the crowd of thousands of protesters still lingering in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square, where a television displayed the news. Opposition leaders argued that the phrase "the legitimacy of your demands" could only refer to the protests' central request -- Mr. Mubarak's departure to make way for free elections.
About an hour later, Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak's right-hand man and newly named vice president, delivered another address, lasting just two minutes.
"I was assigned by the president today to contact all the political forces to start a dialogue about all the raised issues concerning constitutional and legislative reform," he said, "and to find a way to clearly identify the proposed amendments and specific timings for implementing them."
The protesters in the streets took Mr. Suleiman's speech as a capitulation to the army's refusal to use force against them. "The army and the people want the collapse of the government," they chanted in celebration. Even some supporters of Mr. Mubarak acknowledged that events may have turned decisively against him once the military indicated its support for the protesters, especially given the historical independence of the Egyptian military."
There were some dissident voices, however. In Alexandria on Tuesday, young women handed out leaflets to motorists in Alexandria urging people not to attend Tuesday's demonstrations. "Do not turn yourselves over to outside forces trying to create chaos in our country," the leaflets said. The argument seemed unlikely to dissuade protesters who had set up tents in front of the Misr train station in central Alexandria.
Mr. Mubarak's previously unquestioned authority had already eroded deeply over the preceding three days. On Friday, hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilian protesters routed his government's heavily armed security police in a day of street battles, burning his ruling party's headquarters to the ground as the police fled the capital. On Saturday, Mr. Mubarak deployed the military in their place, only to find the rank-and-file soldiers fraternizing with the protesters and revolutionary slogans being scrawled on their tanks.
And on Sunday, leaders of various opposition groups met to select Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to negotiate for them in anticipation of talks with Mr. Mubarak about forming a transitional unity government -- an idea Mr. Mubarak's surrogate embraced Monday.
Mr. Mubarak's government came under pressure from another front as well: the swift deterioration of the economy. The protests, and the specter of looting that followed the police withdrawal, have devastated tourism, the source of half of Egypt's foreign income, and shut down transportation.
Ragui Assaad, an economist at the University of Minnesota, said the potential collapse of the economy was like a gun to Mr. Mubarak's head. "If it's a complete shutdown like this, and it lasts for a few weeks, that is going to be really serious," he said.
On Monday foreign embassies scrambled to book charter flights to evacuate their citizens as thousands of people jammed the Cairo airport trying to flee the country. International companies, including those in the vital oil and natural gas industries, shuttered their operations.
As late as midday, however, Mr. Mubarak seemed to be trying to wait out the protesters. He appeared on television soberly shaking the hands of a new roster of cabinet ministers in a public demonstration that even though protesters may control the streets, he remained head of state.
He reinstated about half of the cabinet he had dismissed three days ago in a bid to soothe the unrest. Indeed, in a sign that he may be digging in for a prolonged battle, he added the position of deputy prime minister to the duties of his powerful defense minister, Mohammed Tantawi, who will serve under Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander he had appointed as prime minister.
The most notable cabinet change was in the official in charge of suppressing the protests. Mr. Mubarak replaced Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, criticized by human rights advocates for tolerating torture and other police abuses and widely reviled here. He was succeeded by Mahmoud Wagdy, a retired general who had been the head of the Cairo criminal investigations division and a former head of prisons.
The street protests were gearing up again, but with a notably different face. For the first time the Muslim Brotherhood stepped to the fore as the protest organizers called their most reliable foot soldiers as reinforcements.
Though outlawed here because of its Islamist ideology, the Brotherhood is the only group in Egypt able to call out a large and disciplined network of experienced organizers, and their presence on Monday was unmistakable.
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