A rebuffed U.S. turns to Egypt’s army in the crisis

Faced with a bloody rejection of its call for a rapid, orderly transition of power in Egypt, the Obama administration finds itself with diminished leverage over President Hosni Mubarak, and has stepped up its contacts with the Egyptian military to try to exert influence over events rocking a key ally.

A frustrated administration Wednesday repeated its demand that Mubarak begin handing over power immediately. U.S. officials also sharply condemned the violence in Cairo that followed Mubarak’s flat rejection of White House overtures to quit.

But with lines of communication between the two capitals badly frayed, officials in Washington say they believe the best channel for persuading Mubarak to leave may be through the Egyptian military, despite the army’s opaque role in the clashes between pro- and anti-Mubarak crowds Wednesday.

“I think our sense is that the military, on balance, is still serving as a buffer between both sides and they likely still hold the key to a peaceful transition,” said one senior U.S. Defense official, who spoke as did others on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy involved.

The strategy is predicated on a White House belief that there is now some separation between the Egyptian military and the Mubarak government.

“They [the military] are positioning themselves as the guardians of the Egyptian state -- not the guardians of Mubarak’s rule,” said a senior administration official.

U.S. policy in this crisis now appears to ride on that bet. It is still uncertain whether the military leadership will abandon one of their own: Mubarak was a career air force officer before becoming president, and his inner circle is heavily composed of current and former military leaders.

And American officials who thought the military would step in to prevent violence in the streets were dismayed by the scenes from Cairo, where soldiers stood by as pro-Mubarak forces clashed openly with anti-government protesters.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton phoned Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s newly appointed vice president and longtime intelligence chief, and urged the government to hold “fully accountable” those responsible for the day’s violence, said Philip J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman.

Clinton also told Suleiman that the government must immediately start its promised overhaul, Crowley said.

Looking for ways to squeeze Mubarak, U.S. officials also stepped up contacts with other political leaders in the region to try to get them to persuade him to leave office. That regional diplomacy followed the failure of a more direct approach by U.S. special envoy Frank Wisner to persuade Mubarak to quit during a meeting Tuesday.

Wisner was on his way back to the United States, a sign that the administration had set aside, for now at least, dealing directly with Mubarak -- or was no longer welcome to do so.

“There are things [President Obama] can do, but there are no obvious steps he can take that you can say with certainty would be effective,” said Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy. “At this point, we’re seeing a pretty intransigent regime that has been resistant to our entreaties.”

Added another U.S. official: “There are limits. The Egyptians are dug in.”

For several days, White House officials maintained a cautious approach to the crisis. When Mubarak said in a speech Tuesday that he would remain until a presidential election in September, Obama countered that a transition of power must begin immediately.

“‘Now’ means yesterday,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

U.S. officials have a deep, longstanding relationship with the Egyptian military and have provided billions of dollars in direct military aid to Cairo. Nonetheless, the ties between the two nations are complex, and it is unclear whether the U.S. will succeed in persuading military officials to help pry Mubarak from power.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have had a series of telephone conversations in recent days with Egyptian counterparts as part of a high-level effort to prevent bloodshed.

“Each and every one of those conversations starts out with a conversation about restraint and nonviolence,” Gibbs told reporters Wednesday, adding that he believed the contacts had contributed to the Egyptian military’s reluctance to move against protesters.

The U.S. provides more than $1 billion a year in aid to Egypt, much of it in military assistance. While U.S. officials would not say whether they have explicitly threatened an aid cutoff, they did say that Egyptian military officials understand that a crackdown would negatively affect the funding.

But the U.S. wields less clout in the current crisis than might be expected because of other forces in play.

“The dollar amount of the military assistance doesn’t allow us to buy and sell the Egyptian military,” said Michele Dunne, a former State Department and National Security Council aide, who once served at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Even if Egypt’s military leaders wanted to shut down the protests, there is no guarantee that orders by senior officers to take action against the protesters would be carried out by rank-and-file soldiers, whose sympathies may lie more with demonstrators than with Mubarak.

U.S. officials acknowledged that the military has limitations as an American partner in this political process.

“They are in a tough position,” one U.S. official said, while saying, nevertheless, that the military was “not moving fast enough” to push government reform.

In the face of the stalemate, some experts said Congress could play a role by taking a stronger stand, perhaps using its leverage as the body that approves the annual aid that has flowed to Egypt since 1979.

“What we need right now is a clear and simple message from Congress that the military needs to get this under control and avert further violence,” said Andrew Albertson, a Middle East analyst.

“Congress is where its aid comes from, and Congress has also played a fairly big role when it comes to Egypt and the peace process.”

peter.nicholas@latimes.com

paul.richter@latimes.com

david.cloud@latimes.com

Times staff writer Christi Parsons in Washington contributed to this report.