EGYPT: Vice president tells protesters to go home, halt “destruction and loss”

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Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman appealed to demonstrators to halt their 9-day-old protest and go home, saying it was time to restore order and repair the damage.

In a message that seemed aimed at the anti-government protesters, citing ‘the destruction and loss suffered since last week,’ the newly named second-in-command to President Hosni Mubarak said a dialogue between government and opposition forces couldn’t begin until normal life was restored to the streets.

Suleiman ‘urged the citizens to return to their place of work, resume their daily lives and the studies in universities and schools,’ an announcer on state-run Nile TV reported.

The vice president’s message followed by several hours an edict broadcast by the network demanding that all protesters leave besieged Tahrir Square, in the center of Cairo, after violent clashes between Mubarak supporters and opponents. Neither that missive nor Suleiman’s set a deadline for compliance but both hinted at the potential for a forceful crackdown should protesters continue to flout the orders for calm.

Thousands remained at Tahrir Square into the early hours Thursday, lobbing firebombs into a narrow no man’s land erected by soldiers struggling to keep the opposing forces apart.

--Carol J. Williams