Egypt’s Leaders Seek to Project Air of Normalcy

CAIRO — As Egypt’s revolt entered its third week the government of President Hosni Mubarak sought to seize the initiative from protesters still crowding Tahrir Square on Monday, offering a pay raise for government employees, announcing a date for opening the stock market and projecting an air of normalcy in a city reeling just days ago.


Vice President Omar Suleiman of Egypt, center back, met with leaders of Egyptian parties and the Muslim brotherhood leadership in Cairo on Sunday. More Photos »

The confident tone, echoed by state-controlled news media that have begun acknowledging the protests after days of the crudest propaganda, suggested that both sides believed the uprising’s vitality might depend on their ability to sway a population still deeply divided over events that represent the most fundamental realignment of politics here in nearly three decades.

“Now it feels like Hosni Mubarak is playing a game of who has the longest breath,” said Amur el-Etrebi, who joined tens of thousands in Tahrir Square on Monday.

On the 15th day of the protests, there were indications on Tuesday that the authorities were trying to limit foreign journalists’ access to Tahrir Square. Soldiers at the only accessible entrance to the square said foreigner reporters would have to present an Egyptian press credential to enter. The vast majority of journalists who have flown in to cover the uprising do not have such a credential, which normally is restricted to resident correspondents and which can be obtained only after a lengthy bureaucratic process.

Momentum has seemed to shift by the day in a climactic struggle over what kind of change Egypt will undergo and whether Egyptian officials are sincere about delivering it. In a sign of the tension, American officials described as “unacceptable” statements by Vice President Omar Suleiman that the country was not ready for democracy, but showed no sign that they had shifted away from supporting Mr. Suleiman, a man widely viewed here as an heir to Mr. Mubarak.

After demonstrating an ability to bring hundreds of thousands to downtown Cairo, protest organizers have sought to broaden their movement this week, acknowledging that simple numbers are not enough to force Mr. Mubarak’s departure. The government — by trying to divide the opposition, offering limited concessions and remaining patient — appears to believe it can weather the biggest challenge to its rule.

Underlining the government’s perspective that it has already offered what the protesters demanded, Naguib Sawiris, a wealthy businessman who has sought to act as a mediator, said: “Tahrir is underestimating their victory. They should declare victory.”

Cairo’s chronic traffic jams returned Monday as the city began to adapt to both the sprawling protests in Tahrir Square, a landmark of downtown Cairo, and the tanks, armored personnel carriers and soldiers who continued to block some streets. Banks again opened their doors, as people lined up outside, and some shops took newspapers down from windows, occasionally near burnt-out vehicles still littering some streets.

The government has sought to cultivate that image of the ordinary, mobilizing its newspapers and television to insist that it was re-exerting control over the capital after its police force utterly collapsed on Jan. 28. The cabinet on Monday held its first formal meeting since Mr. Mubarak reorganized it after the protests.

Officials announced that the stock market, whose index fell nearly 20 percent in two days of protests, would reopen Sunday and that six million government employees would receive a 15 percent raise, which the new finance minister, Samir Radwan, said would take effect in April.

The raise mirrored moves in Kuwait and Jordan to raise salaries or provide grants to stanch anger over rising prices across the Middle East, shaken with the repercussions of Egypt’s uprising and the earlier revolt in Tunisia. In Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Friday he would cut in half his salary, believed to be $350,000, amid anger there over dreary government services.

As in the past the government here has swerved between crackdown and modest moves of conciliation. In harrowing raids it arrested 30 human rights activists, but released them by Sunday morning. Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive and an organizer of the revolt, was freed Monday after disappearing nearly two weeks ago.

In past years the government has managed to at least make its version of events the dominant narrative, but in the outpouring of dissent here that is no longer the case. Fighting still flared in the Sinai Peninsula, where Bedouins, long treated as second-class citizens, have fought Egyptian security forces for weeks.