Generals promise Egypt power transfer

EGYPT’S ruling generals offered last night to transfer power to a civilian president by July in a dramatic attempt to placate protesters and defuse a political crisis that has jolted plans for the country’s first free election in decades.

The military council, in power since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February, also agreed at a meeting with politicians to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf’s cabinet and to replace it with a national salvation government within days to steer Egypt to civilian rule.

“We agreed on July as the month to transfer power to a civilian president,” said one participant, Emad Abdel Ghafour, head of the Salafi Islamist Nour (Light) Party.

He said a president would be elected in June ahead of a power transfer in July.

Under the previous army timetable, the vote might not have taken place until late 2012 or early 2013.

Anger against the military council exploded this month after a cabinet proposal to set out constitutional principles that would permanently shield the army from civilian oversight.

Ghafour and other politicians said parliamentary elections would start as planned on Monday.

The concessions have been wrenched from the military by five days of protests against army rule in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere amid violence that has cost at least 36 lives.

It seemed doubtful if they would satisfy the demonstrators, who again braved clouds of tear gas to converge on Tahrir Square to demand that the generals relinquish power immediately.

Fahmy Ali, one protester in Tahrir, said the concessions did not go far enough. “We demand a full purge of the system and the removal of the military council,” he said.

Protesters earlier hanged from a lamp post an effigy of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the 76-year-old army chief who served as Mubarak’s defence minister for two decades.

Ahmed Shouman, an army major who gained fame as the first officer to join protests against Mubarak, returned to Tahrir to join the demonstrations. Ecstatic protesters carried him on their shoulders.

Shouman was acquitted in a military court after his defection in February, but was suspended from service.

About 5,000 people also marched in the port city of Alexandria to join 2,000 already demonstrating against army rule outside a military command headquarters, witnesses said.

In a stinging verdict on nine months of army control, rights group Amnesty International accused the military council of brutality sometimes exceeding that of Mubarak.

The United States, which gives Egypt’s military $1.3 billion (€1bn) a year in aid, called for an end to the “deplorable” violence in Egypt and said elections there must go forward.

“We are deeply concerned about the violence. The violence is deplorable. We call on all sides to exercise restraint,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Protesters singing and waving flags skirmished with security forces in and around Tahrir Square, where banners read “Save Egypt from thieves and the military.” As tear gas set off stampedes, activists chanted “stay, stay, stay.”

Youth groups had called for a mass turnout to press demands for the military to give way to civilian rule now, rather than according to its own ponderous timetable. “Come to Tahrir, tomorrow we will overthrow the field marshal!” protesters chanted, referring to Tantawi.