US REACTION:THE OBAMA administration has recalibrated its message on the uprising in Egypt, even as it comes under criticism from leading US newspapers for its handling of the crisis.
Vice-president Joe Biden made the most precise set of demands to date in a telephone conversation with the Egyptian vice-president Omar Suleiman, the White House announced on Tuesday evening.
Chief among them is an end to the state of emergency declared by President Hosni Mubarak in 1981. It bans more than three members of a political group meeting without permission. Mr Suleiman says that now is not the time to lift the state of emergency.
Mr Biden also told Mr Suleiman the US wants the Egyptian ministry of the interior to stop “the arrests, harassment, beating and detention of journalists, and political and civil society activists,” and asked that a broader range of opposition members be included in negotiations on the political transition in Egypt.
Mr Biden and Mr Suleiman know each other from the time when Mr Biden headed the US Senate foreign relations committee and Mr Suleiman was in charge of Egyptian intelligence.
An editorial in yesterday's New York Timessaid the Obama administration "badly miscalculated when they endorsed Egypt's vice-president, Omar Suleiman, to lead the transition to democracy . . . He appears far more interested in maintaining as much of the old repressive order as he can get away with."
The editorial said Mr Obama was right to demand immediate democratic change last week, but regretted that “Hillary Clinton’s recent statements that change would ‘take some time’ have taken the pressure off”.
Asked about reports quoting state department officials suggesting Mr Mubarak might have to stay until September, Mr Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I want to be clear. I speak for the president of the United States of America. We are not here to determine who leads Egypt and when they lead Egypt.”
Mr Gibbs responded to expressions of frustration by Egyptian protesters that the US had eased up on pressure for change. “I don’t think what the president has said has in any way eased on up what we want to see,” he said.
The White House spokesman repeated at least 15 times in the course of an hour-long briefing that it was up to the Egyptian people, not the US administration, to determine their future. But he seemed to endorse the continuing protests – which Mr Suleiman says must end soon. “Unless or until those that are seeking to have their grievances addressed – until they believe that that’s actually happening, the pressure is going to continue,” Mr Gibbs predicted.
The fact demonstrators turned out in record numbers on Tuesday constituted “a good answer for the vice-president of Egypt about the progress that the people in Egypt see and feel,” Mr Gibbs said.
Last week, Mr Suleiman told state-run television that “foreign states” were trying to intervene in Egypt. This was interpreted by Egyptians loyal to the regime to mean the US. Such rhetoric was “at great odds with what we know is actually happening on the ground,” Mr Gibbs said.
The Obama administration’s confused policy is increasingly criticised by US media. “The improvisational – critics say closer to schizophrenic – nature of US diplomacy during the crisis leaves the administration in the unwelcome position of having to make amends with whichever side emerges from the Egyptian tumult,” said the online newspaper Politico.
In yesterday's Washington Post, Jackson Diehl said the Obama administration ignored repeated warnings about the volatility of Egypt by the bipartisan Working Group on Egypt since April 2010. This week, the group relayed its fears that the administration "may acquiesce to an inadequate and possibly fraudulent transition process".
US lawmakers have tempered demands for the departure of Mr Mubarak and cuts in aid to Egypt. Mr Obama is expected to include aid to Egypt in the 2012 budget he will submit to Congress next week.