Clinton holds talks in Egypt on post-Mubarak transition

Mar 15, 2011, 19:13 GMT

Cairo - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton promised Tuesday that her country would help Egypt on its road to greater freedom and democratic elections.

Clinton made the pledge after talks with Foreign Minister Nabil el-Araby shortly after her arrival in Cairo on a two-day visit to meet the country's transitional leadership and opposition.

Clinton, the highest-ranking US official to visit Egypt since president Hosny Mubarak's ouster last month, pressed the new leadership to stick to their promise of change.

The secretary of state welcomed an announcement earlier Tuesday that authorities were dismantling further parts of the state security apparatus.

In her remarks, Clinton also referred to the situation in Bahrain, where Saudi troops arrived Monday to confront a popular uprising by Shiite Muslims against the country's Sunni rulers.

'The use of force and violence from any sources will only worsen the situation,' Clinton said, calling on all sides to negotiate a political solution.

Clinton was also meeting Egypt's Defence Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, now in charge of the country, and Prime Minister Essam Sharaf, before departing to Tunisia on Wednesday.

She was also due to meet with members of civil society and opposition groups. One of the groups, the January 25th coalition, said it would not attend the talks.

'The youth coalition is not welcoming the representative of that administration, who is Hilary Clinton,' its spokesman Khaled Abd el Hamid told the German Press Agency dpa.

'The American administration supported Mubarak politically. Plus the majority of tear gas that was thrown at the Egyptian revolutionaries was made in America,' he said.

Clinton arrived in Cairo after an overnight stop in Paris for talks on Libya with the Group of Eight (G8), which continued on Tuesday in her absence.

Before leaving Paris, she met with a representative of the Libyan rebel-led Transitional National Council, which has been calling for a no-fly zone and airstrikes against Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi.

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