Massive crowd greets ElBaradei's return to Cairo (Roundup)

By Nehal El-Sherif and Elijah Zarwan Feb 19, 2010, 17:28 GMT

Cairo - A massive crowd of Egyptians burst into applause when former UN nuclear agency head Mohamed ElBaradei landed in Cairo airport Friday, calling on him to run for president next year.

'We came to welcome a respected Egyptian citizen,' prominent Egyptian columnist Hamdi Qandil told reporters at the airport.

'Our presence at the airport expresses the feelings of a lot of Egyptians who want change, and the great hope that Mohammed ElBaradei will stand with us.'

An Egyptian Interior Ministry official told the German Press Agency dpa that police estimated that some 2,000 people had showed up to express their support.

The crush of supporters was such that ElBaradei, who had been slated to leave through a side entrance reserved for dignitaries but initially insisted on greeting his supporters, was forced to leave through an adjoining terminal.

As he drove off, one man lay down in front of his car in an attempt to keep him from leaving.

The crowds, who showed up despite the Interior Ministry's warnings against 'illegal gatherings' at the airport, sang the national anthem and chanted 'ElBaradei, teach them a lesson: Free Egypt is not for succession.'

ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has not announced an intention to run in Egypt's 2011 presidential elections. And he is, as an independent, constitutionally prohibited from doing so.

But that hasn't dampened rising speculation that he may run - from both potential backers and opponents - making his arrival on Friday a national event.

A group in support of his candidacy on the social-networking website Facebook has more than 66,000 members. The opposition group Kifaya (Enough) movement issued a statement welcoming ElBaradei and urging him to settle in Egypt.

A downtown Cairo restaurant owner gave half his employees the day off so they could welcome ElBaradei, the daily al-Shorouq reported.

'We need to change the whole kitchen, because the same kitchen will produce the same kind of food,' the man said.

President Hosny Mubarak has ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years, and many speculate that he is grooming his son Gamal, 45, for the job. Gamal Mubarak is the head of the ruling-party's policy-making committee, and sometimes appears on billboards alongside his father.

ElBaradei, as an independent, is constitutionally prohibited from running for the presidential elections.

Amendments to Article 76 of the Egyptian constitution, passed in 2007, require presidential candidates to have been a member of a legal party's senior leadership for at least a year.

ElBaradei has held no such post, and has said that he would run only if the constitution were amended to allow independents to run and to allow judicial supervision of elections.

There have been no shortage of invitations for him to join a party.

'We are with him, behind him, and in front of him, and we insist that he runs for the presidency,' Mamdouh Qenawi, head of the Free Constitution Party, told reporters at the airport Friday.