Mubarak reported to have suffered stroke in hospital

A LAWYER representing ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has announced that he had suffered a stroke and slipped into a coma at a hospital in the resort town of Sharm El- Sheikh.

Doctors at the hospital however have said Mr Mubarak’s health is stable.

Meanwhile, several Egyptian ministers have resigned in anticipation of a major cabinet reshuffle by prime minister Essam Sharaf under pressure from revolutionaries camped out in Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square and squares around the country.

Foreign minister Muhammad El-Orabi, finance minister Samir Radwan and trade and industry minister Samir el-Sayid are among the ministers who have stepped down and Dr Sharaf has appointed new deputies for economic affairs and political and legal affairs, choosing candidates approved by organisers of the uprising that ousted Mr Mubarak last February.

Dr Sharaf has, however, been constrained by the claim by the ruling military council that it has “sole authority” over cabinet membership and its insistence on being consulted on every appointment.

The prime minister reportedly seeks to replace as many as 15 ministers, but cannot do so without the approval of the generals.

On Saturday, 73 political groups, parties and coalitions issued a new set of demands that must be implemented before the Tahrir Square sit-in will end.

They called for the transfer of Mr Mubarak to Cairo’s Tora prison and the setting up of a special tribunal for officials accused of killing protesters, with Mr Mubarak the first to stand trial.

On the list of demands were the removal of justice minister Abdel Aziz El-Guindy and the prosecutor general, who have been accused of delaying prosecutions of senior officials and policemen.

The protesters demanded the setting of limits for minimum and maximum wages and a ban on former ruling party members from political activity for five years.

An end to military trials for protesters arrested during the 18-day uprising and afterwards remains one of the key demands of the democracy movement.

While the military council, which assumed presidential powers when Mr Mubarak resigned, has not granted this demand, it has announced that such trials would be mandatory for “thuggish elements” who attack democracy demonstrators.

In Syria, meanwhile, the military continued its crackdown on restive towns and cities, while exiled dissidents met in Istanbul to urge countrymen to mount a civil disobedience campaign aimed at overthrowing the Baathist regime.

Some 400 members of the opposition, representing the entire range of opinion from the Muslim Brotherhood to left-wingers, attended a so-called “National Salvation Conference”.

Opposition figure Wael al-Hafez urged the gathering to “raise the intensity of the peaceful confrontation by [engaging in] civil disobedience [in order to] choke the regime economically and paralyse the state, with the least damage”.

Activists in Syria, who had been planning to take part by video-link, were compelled to maintain contact only by phone due to Friday’s violence, which left between 28 and 32 people dead.

The Istanbul gathering elected a 25-member national salvation council, but it is unclear how much support this body has within Syria – it is composed of elderly notables who left the country years ago.

In Istanbul yesterday, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said: “What’s happening in Syria is very uncertain and troubling because many of us had hoped that President [Bashar al-] Assad would make the reforms that were necessary. The brutality has to stop; there must be a legitimate, sincere effort with the opposition to make changes.”

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 1,419 people and 352 members of the security forces have been killed since March.

In Damascus, preparations were going ahead for a music festival to mark the 11th anniversary of Dr Assad’s succession to the presidency on the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad.

Troops were reported to have arrested prominent writer Ali Abdallah, a fierce critic of the state’s use of violence against the uprising, his son said yesterday.

“Ten soldiers entered my father’s house around 9am in the Damascus suburb of Qatana, and took him. He just had heart surgery three weeks ago,” Mohammad Abdallah told Reuters by telephone from exile in Washington.

Mr Abdallah (61), a secularist, was released in May after spending four years in prison.