the country s new prime minister chosen by the military rulers speaks on egypt tv. take a look at this, this is live. this is tahrir square. tens of thousands of folks are reacting to the appointment of a leader who served under mubarak s regime, and critics are saying that the military is giving him even greater powers than his predecessor. what about the united states? well, we re urging egypt s military leadership to transfer power to a civilian government and make it happen as soon as possible. reena ninan live in our mideast bureau following that. are they listening? reporter: that s the problem, you know, we re seeing two very big groups, jamie. one pro-government which we haven t really seen in the past few days and, obviously, the anti-government, protesters that have been camped out really since saturday demanding change, and those anti-government forces are the ones that are upset about the new appointment of the prime minister. they have been demanding, they want the trans
done to reach an agreement on the budget. president obama is condemning the current violence in bahrain, urging the country s king to show restrain after a series of bloody protests. thousands of protesters are gathering again right now in the square after riot police pulled back from the area. joining me me here in the studio, former washington bureau chief for egypt tv, good morning to you. good morning, alex. how is this uprising different from what happened in egypt? it is different, but there are many commonalities between them and the same in libya and others. people in bahrain, they have 70% majority of shia muslims. and if you like, they have been oppressed for so long and they need some rights. because sunnis are in power? exactly.
when you take a look at the letter of the law, we re also hearing egypt tv is reporting that they will bow airing the announcement made by president mubarak that we have been hearing this morning within the last hour or so that he will bow coming forward to announce his resignation and that s what we ve been talking about in this breaking news within the last hours. i will now go to brett. you serve on the council on foreign relations, also a former staff member for the national security council. when you look at this question posed by jami, which is what is the next step, how do we get to a situation where it is beneficial to egyptians but also the united states? we were talking about and i agree with jami, this is regime change. we remember that phrase from iraq. that means you have a total transformation you were just there. i was, yes. so you have the army here. the good news here the word coup draws all sorts of ramifications. mubarak has now been forced out. that s ac
other,s that has been a successful effort. let s bring in our panel. the middle east analyst and former washington bureau chief for egypt tv, a former member of egypt s parliament and a concern member of the opposition coalition, and professor of american foreign policy at american university, formerly served at u.s. embassy in cairo. mohammed, i ve got to start with you. the day of departure, as protestors have called it, and now we are at a stand-off between both sides here. well, i smell something there because when you watch egypt tv, the official service in egypt and you they are now having guests, talking loudly about departure of mubarak, they are asking him, please, let the authority go to omar suleiman and the army. when you hear that on egypt tv you know that something is coming. i ve got ask you, yesterday
analyst and also a former d.c. bureau chief for egypt tv. just hearing the fact of the president talking momentarily, just giving only a moment to egypt before he takes reporters questions about talking about the fact the future of egypt is going to be decided by its people. we were talking about mohamed elbaradei, an egyptian opposition activist and someone that said he would be willing to run for president there. as you were saying, he may not be the first choice leader of all egyptians because he s not well known enough maybe in the country itself. what are other options for who may take over leadership in egypt? let me, first, say something about when we heard from the president. when he say his understanding that discussions are already going on in egypt about the transition, i think this may give us a signal it s a done deal. he doesn t like it to look like