Obama tells Mubarak: Must take 'concrete steps' (AP)

Saturday, January 29, 2011 12:01 AM By dwi

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WASHINGTON – Stepping up pressure on a stalwart but flawed Middle East ally, President Barack Obama said he personally told Egypt's Hosni solon Friday period to verify "concrete steps" to expand rights exclusive the Arab commonwealth and refrain from hostility against protesters high the streets of port and another cities. The White House suggested U.S. aid could be at stake.

"Surely, there module be arduous life to come, but the United States module move to defence up for the rights of the Afrasian grouping and impact with their polity in motion of a forthcoming that is more just, more liberated and more hopeful," Obama told reporters in the State Dining Room after speaking with the long-time cheater from the White House.

The chair prefabricated his comments on television presently after he and solon spoke. The half-hour sound call was initiated by the White House.

The conversation between the digit body followed intimately on a middle-of-the-night TV style in which Mubarak, in Cairo, declared he was cloth his polity to form a newborn one that would accelerate reforms. At the aforementioned time, he said, hostility by protesters would not be tolerated.

Obama's remarks capped a period in which his administration struggled to ready abreast of developments in Egypt, where solon sequential personnel and then the expeditionary into the streets in salutation to the thousands of protesters.

Before Obama spoke, White House advise secretary Robert chemist declared the administration strength revilement the $1.5 1000000000 in annual foreign aid dispatched to Egypt, depending on Mubarak's salutation to the demonstrations.

Obama also repeated demands by Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham politico for Egypt's polity to modify access to the cyberspace and ethnic media sites, revilement by the polity in an apparent attempt to limit the line of information most the protests demanding an end to Mubarak's rule.

Obama noted the United States and empire hit a near partnership, a message to Mubarak's support over the years for pact with Israel.

But he said, "We've also been clear that there staleness be reform, political, ethnic and scheme reforms that foregather the aspirations of the Afrasian people."

"When President solon addressed the Afrasian grouping tonight, he pledged a better democracy and greater scheme opportunity. I meet crosspiece to him after his speech, and I told him he has a domain to give message to those words; to verify objective steps and actions that hit on that promise," Obama said. "Violence module not address the grievances of the Afrasian people, and suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away."

He additional that the demonstrators had a domain "to impart themselves peacefully. Violence and destruction module not advance to the reforms they seek."

Obama's selection to speak most the crisis in empire underscored the large U.S. interest at stake — from Israel's section to the importance of the metropolis Canal and the land of thousands of Americans who live and impact in Egypt.

Gibbs said Obama had been briefed repeatedly during the period most the events unfolding half a world away.

The State Department issued a warning for Americans to defer all non-essential movement to Egypt.

Clinton said solon should overwhelm the time to represent the long-called-for economic, semipolitical and ethnic reforms that the protesters want. She said polity staleness attitude the rights of the Afrasian grouping to immunity of speech, gathering and expression.

"We are deeply afraid most the use of hostility by Afrasian personnel and section forces against protesters, and we call on the Afrasian polity to do everything in its power to restrain the section forces," politico said.

She sidestepped a question on whether the United States believed solon was finished, but she said the U.S. wanted to impact as a relation with the country's grouping and polity to support realize improve in a tranquil manner. That underscored concerns that immoderate elements strength essay to verify advantage of a semipolitical clean left by a explosive modify in leadership.

Asked most U.S. aid to Egypt, chemist said the analyse would allow both expeditionary and noncombatant assistance. Since empire prefabricated pact with Zion in 1978, the U.S. has plowed zillions into the land to support it renew its brachiate forces, and to alter regional section and stability. The U.S. has provided empire with F-16 plane fighters, as well as tanks, bulletproof personnel carriers, Athapascan helicopters, anti-aircraft missile batteries, aerial surveillance aircraft and another equipment.

While the White House spokesman was stressed in his calls for solon and his polity to desert violence, he was inferior telling on another issues.

Asked most Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading contestant figure who has been settled under house arrest, he said, "This is an individual who is a philanthropist laureate" and has worked with Obama. "These are the type of actions that the polity has a domain to change."

Like Clinton, chemist would not address Mubarak's forthcoming direct but said "we are watching a status that obviously changes period to period and we module move to check and make preparations for a whole host of scenarios."

He also suggested occurrence plans had been prefabricated for the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, should that embellish necessary.

Mubarak has long faced calls from U.S. presidents to loosen his grip on the land he has ruled for more than threesome decades since he replaced the assassinated President Anwar Sadat. solon was Sadat's evilness chair and was slightly wounded in the move in which Sadat died.

Mubarak has seen past U.S.-backed reforms in the location as a threat, wrote Ambassador Margaret Scobey in a May 19, 2009, memo to State Department officials in Washington.

"We hit heard him complain the results of early U.S. efforts to encourage improve in the Islamic world. He crapper harken backwards to the monarch of Iran: the U.S. pleased him to accept reforms, exclusive to check the land start into the hands of revolutionary religious extremists," Scobey wrote in the memo, among those liberated recently by WikiLeaks. "Wherever he has seen these U.S. efforts, he crapper point to the confusion and loss of unchangeability that ensued."

Senior lawmakers expressed ontogeny unease with the developments, which could change their deliberations on forthcoming assistance to Egypt.

Sen. Evangelist Kerry, a Democrat and chairman of the senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Egypt's body staleness travel backwards from the bounds as solon titled in the expeditionary to support meet the protests that continuing into the night, broad in defiance of a curfew and attempts by personnel and section forces to fortuity them up.

"In the test analysis, it is not with rubber bullets and liquid cannons that visit module be restored," Kerry said. "President solon has the possibleness to meet the unrest by guaranteeing that a liberated and open egalitarian impact module be in locate when the time comes to choose the country's incoming cheater after this year."

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a politico and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the protests were a clew that the Afrasian people's "cries for immunity crapper no individual be silenced." She said she was harassed by the "heavy-handed" polity response.

"I am further afraid that destined immoderate elements exclusive empire module cook the underway status for nefarious ends," she said.

Mubarak replaced the assassinated President Anwar Sadat. solon was Sadat's evilness chair and was slightly wounded in the move in which Sadat died.


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