Brotherhood may quit Cairo talks

The Muslim Brotherhood has warned that it will abandon historic talks in Cairo if opposition demands are not met.

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Cairo - United States President Barack Obama said on Monday that talks to resolve Egypt's crisis were making progress, but the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo said it could quit the process if opposition demands were not met.

Obama's comments seemed to contradict those by Egyptian opposition figures who reported little progress in the talks over demands that include a call for the immediate exit of President Hosni Mubarak.

“Obviously, Egypt has to negotiate a path and they're making progress,” Obama told reporters in Washington.

The United States has urged all sides to allow time for an “orderly transition” to a new political order in Egypt, for decades a strategic ally. But protesters worry that when Mubarak does leave, he will be replaced not with the democracy they seek but with another authoritarian ruler.

The potential rise to power of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, widely seen as by far the best organised opposition group, troubles Egypt's Western allies.

Obama has said the Islamist group lacks majority support.

Mubarak, 82, who refuses calls to end his 30-year-old rule before September polls, saying his resignation would cause chaos in the Arab world's most populous nation, has tried to focus on restoring order and his government seems to be buying time.

Protesters, barricaded in a tent camp in Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo, have vowed to stay until Mubarak quits and hope to take their two-week campaign to the streets with more mass demonstrations on Tuesday and Friday.

Keen to get traffic moving around Tahrir Square, the army tried early on Monday to squeeze the area the protesters have occupied. Overnight campers rushed out of their tents to surround soldiers attempting to corral them into a smaller area.

The powerful army's role in the next weeks is considered critical to the future of Egypt.

“The army is getting restless and so are the protesters. The army wants to squeeze us into a small circle in the middle of the square to get the traffic moving again,” protester Mohamed Shalaby, 27, told Reuters by telephone.

The uprising, which some activists have called the “Nile Revolution”, may have cost 300 lives so far, according to the United Nations.

The opposition has been calling for the constitution to be rewritten to allow free and fair presidential elections, a limit on presidential terms, the dissolution of parliament, the release of political detainees and lifting of emergency law.

“We are assessing the situation. We are going to reconsider the whole question of dialogue,” the Brotherhood's Essam el-Erian told Reuters on Monday. “We will reconsider according to the results. Some of our demands have been met but there has been no response to our principal demands that Mubarak leave”.

The presence at the weekend talks of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, whose members have for years been repressed by Mubarak's feared security forces, was a significant development that would have been unthinkable before the uprising. - Reuters

Source: http://www.iol.co.za/brotherhood-may-quit-cairo-talks-1.1022727

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