CAIRO — Opposition groups including the banned Muslim Brotherhood held landmark talks Sunday with Egypt’s vice president, but the two sides remained at apparent loggerheads over opponents’ principal demand: that President Hosni Mubarak step aside now.
The government offered upnew concessions that would have constituted an undreamed-of bonanza for the opposition only a few weeks ago. But demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square shrugged off the conciliatory steps, saying nothing less than Mubarak’s departure would satisfy them.
Protesters by the thousands continued their round-the- clock occupation of the plaza, which has taken on the air of a mini-city within a city. However, revolutionary fervor was increasingly at odds with the wishes of many Egyptians to resume their normal routines.
Banks, shops and businesses reopened Sunday, the first day of the work week. Traffic surged on previously empty roadways.
In talks with some opposition groups, Vice President Omar Suleiman dangled the possibility of abolishing Egypt’s state of emergency, a widely loathed 30-year-old decree that gives sweeping powers to the security establishment.
Suleiman also offered what amounted to an amnesty for nonviolent protesters, greater media freedoms, formal redress for those seized by the secret police and the creation of a broadly representative committee to work on constitutional reforms. Most in the square expressed skepticism there would be follow-through on such pledges.
Still, Suleiman’s face-to-face talks that included the Brotherhood, which has been outlawed since the 1950s, were momentous for a government that for decades has attempted to isolate that organization through intimidation and the arrests of thousands of its members.
Inviting the nation’s largest opposition party — one that supports a constitution based on Islamic law — into negotiations reveals how much Egypt’s political landscape has changed in the past two weeks.
In Washington, political officials and diplomatic experts applauded the talks, saying they could represent a turning point in the crisis.
It is “frankly quite extraordinary,” said Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
It remains unclear whether the Egyptian government, the Brotherhood and other opposition groups can reach compromises on reform while Mubarak is in power.
In a communique issued after Sunday’s talks, endorsed by the opposition groups taking part, Suleiman promised a full investigation of the abrupt pullback of police in cities nine days ago — a move that triggered a wave of looting — and also a probe of last week’s violent and seemingly carefully choreographed attack on the square by groups supporting the regime.
The talks Sunday drew criticism from one key opposition leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who said he would not negotiate until Mubarak stepped down.
