Egypt's newly appointed vice president met with opposition groups Sunday, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, in a bid to defuse a protest movement that has placed unprecedented pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to step down.
With parts of Cairo locked in flux as the protests continue in the city centre, Vice President Omar Suleiman also proposed sweeping reforms, including allowing freedom of the press, lifting the country's longstanding emergency law and freeing those detained by security forces since mass protests began nearly two weeks ago.
Suleiman said the country's reviled emergency law -- which has been imposed since 1981 and allowed the regime to make arrests without charge, hold prisoners for an indefinite period, suspend constitutional rights and legalize censorship -- would be lifted when security allows.
He and the opposition groups also backed a plan to create a committee of political and judicial representatives to examine how to change the constitution.
According to the state news agency, proposed constitutional reforms include forcing term limits on the president and allowing more candidates to run for that post.
The committee has until the beginning of March to recommend how to make those changes.
However, the demonstrators said not enough has been done for them to end their crippling protests. They have been demanding greater freedoms and the immediate resignation of Mubarak, who has been in power for three decades.
"None of those who attended represent us," said Khaled Abdul-Hamid, a leader of an organization representing several of the youth movements behind the 13-day-old protests.
"We are determined to press on until our number one demand is met."
Still, in other concessions, the regime vowed not to harass anti-government protesters, who have been holding public demonstrations since Jan. 25. It also agreed not to impede text messaging or Internet access.
On Sunday, U.S. President Barack Obama gave further indication that perhaps Mubarak should leave sooner than later.
But Obama refused to speculate on when a departure would occur.
"Only he knows what he's going to do," Obama told Fox News.
Obama also downplayed fears that the Muslim Brotherhood would create an anti-American government in Egypt.
"I think that the Muslim Brotherhood is one faction in Egypt," Obama said. "They don't have majority support."
Meanwhile, Allesandro Bruno Deputy, deputy editor of The North Africa Journal, said that negotiations with the Muslim Brotherhood -- the country's largest opposition group, which has been illegal for 52 years -- will be significant in the transition.
"I think they're going to offer them a legal right to participate in politics," Bruno told CTV News Channel. "They've been a very long-standing force in Egyptian politics, since the 1920s."
The reforms announced Sunday followed a series of earlier concessions since the popular uprising began. They appear aimed at appeasing the protesters as well as easing international pressure on Egypt's government.
Exit timeline
Since the unrest broke out, the embattled 82-year-old leader has said that he will not seek re-election but will remain as president until elections are held in September. The government has also vowed that Mubarak's son Gamal, who many believed would succeed him, will not run for president.
But earlier this week he appointed Suleiman, a close ally and the former head of the country's intelligence service, as vice-president. It's the first time Mubarak has had a vice-president since taking power in 1981. Suleiman is widely considered to Mubarak's successor, at least during the transition period.
Facing mounting protests, Mubarak replaced his Cabinet and promised to institute reforms. The top leaders of his party were also fired on Saturday.
However, Mubarak has said he cannot step aside for the time being because it would cause chaos.
In Cairo, CTV's Middle East Bureau Chief Martin Seemungal said the president has been able to weather the mass demonstrations -- some of which have drawn hundreds of thousands of protesters -- largely because the regime's security apparatus is so powerful.
The army in particular would like to see a gradual, rather than a quick transition away from Mubarak because it will help them "control the situation," Seemungal said.
"If you ask why Hosni Mubarak is still in power today, it's because the army -- especially the upper echelons of the army -- have they decided that's okay with them."
Despite the latest concessions by the regime, protests continued in Cairo's Tahrir Square, which has become the symbolic centre of the uprising.
Soldiers were tightly controlling access into and out of the square, Seemungal said, as tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators gathered there for another day. Many wore bandages, after fighting off Mubarak supporters earlier in the week.
Away from the negotiations and the demonstrators, it appeared that some semblance of normalcy was returning to parts of Egypt. After a week of closures, many schools and banks reopened on Sunday, the first day of the work week.
With files from The Associated Press
