Two of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s closest allies, his new vice president, Omar Suleiman, and his defense minister, Hussein Tantawi, are quietly working on a plan under which Mubarak would step down from power, according to a U.S. scholar who has been staying in regular touch with the Egyptian political and military leadership.
“They want to be sure that Mubarak is going to cooperate,” said Stephen P. Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development and a longtime confidant of Egyptian and Israeli leaders.
The two-part plan, according to Cohen, would involve the immediate removal of 100 members of the Egyptian Parliament whose election this past fall was seen as illegitimate. They would be replaced by 100 candidates who were barred from running in the election or who were defeated because of government meddling in the election process.
A second possible step would be the organization of new parliamentary and presidential elections. The plan, according to Cohen, “requires [Mubarak] to give up his office.” Asked whether Mubarak would do that, Cohen answered, “He is getting ready to do so.”
***
The White House on Sunday dispatched a former ambassador to Egypt, Frank Wisner, to fly to Cairo to urge the Egyptian government to, at the very least, embrace political reforms.
“As someone with deep experience in the region,” a White House official says, Wisner “is meeting with Egyptian officials and providing his assessment.”
Senior officials would not discuss whether Wisner was charged with showing Mubarak the door. Wisner, the ambassador to Egypt from 1986 to 1991, is currently in Cairo.
A major readjustment to administration rhetoric in response to the crisis in Egypt came on Sunday when the phrase of the day was “orderly transition.”
The president issued a statement saying he supports “an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people.” And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took to the Sunday shows to make that argument. “it needs to be an orderly, peaceful transition to real democracy,” she said.
But transition to what?
[…]
One administration official tells ABC News: “we don’t know.”
This blog is no longer active as of October 31, 2011
