After the first session of talks held on Sunday between the opposition and newly-appointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood opposition movement reaffirmed his group's commitment to the demand for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. “We have not given up that demand; this is the people's demand,” Mohamed Morsi, the group's official spokesman, told Al-Masry Al-Youm in a phone interview shortly after the meeting. Earlier today, Suleiman inaugurated the first session of national dialogue with different opposition factions, including official--i.e., licensed--political parties, the Muslim Brotherhood and several young protest leaders. The highpoint of the meeting was the participation of the banned-but-tolerated brotherhood, the inclusion of which implied the regime's unofficial recognition of the formally outlawed organization. In a statement issued after the talks, the group listed a number of demands agreed upon by both the regime and the opposition, including the lifting of the state of emergency “as soon as the security situation improves and before any elections are held”; amending three constitutional articles; acknowledging the right to stage peaceful demonstrations; ensuring the freedom of the media; and stopping smear campaigns by state-owned media against protesters. For the last 13 days, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets to demand the resignation of the 82-year-old president. So far, Mubarak has turned a deaf ear to this demand. Instead, he sacked his cabinet and reshuffled his party, while promising not to run for a sixth term as president in September and amend two constitutional articles that would relax eligibility conditions for presidential candidates and put a curb on the number of terms a president can serve. “He [Suleiman] presented his vision that President Mubarak should stay at least nominally until the constitutional amendments are concluded,” Morsi said. Yet, the Muslim Brotherhood's statement did not mention whether the group had stated its position on Mubarak's future at the meeting. When asked whether the group would go further with the dialogue if Suleiman ignored this demand, Morsi replied by asking: “Is it meaningful to have a dialogue that goes against the will of the people on the street?” While Suleiman held talks with the opposition, representatives of a number of youth-led groups insisted that they would not negotiate with the regime until Mubarak resigned.
