Obama Urges Faster Shift of Power in Egypt

By ANTHONY SHADID
NYT

CAIRO — Just hours after President Hosni Mubarak declared Tuesday night that he would step down in September as modern Egypt’s longest-serving leader, President Obama strongly suggested that Mr. Mubarak’s concession was not enough, declaring that an “orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.”

While the meaning of the last phrase was deliberately vague, it appeared to be a signal that Mr. Mubarak might not be able to delay the shift to a new leadership.

In what seemed a new initiative on Wednesday, the powerful Egyptian military, which has pledged not to use force against peaceful protesters, called for the first time for the demonstrators to bring this paralyzed city back to normal, apparently urging the president’s adversaries to withdraw.

“The army forces are calling on you,” an army spokesman said on state television. “You began by going out to express your demands and you are the ones capable of restoring normal life,” he said, adding that the message and demands had been heard. Although the immediate impact of the statement was not clear, the military’s message was part of a fast-moving sequence of events and could open a new and unpredictable chapter.

(Original here.)