Egyptian protesters have rejected army's appeal to leave Cairo's Tahrir Square, insisting on their demand for a civilian government to be fulfilled two days after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak.
The protesters remained in the square on Saturday night warning of further rallies if the military fails to fulfill its promise of a peaceful transition of power to a democratic civilian system.
Protest organizers say they are trying to form a council to hold talks with the military. They say their aim is to direct the revolution during the transitional period.
Egyptian soldiers shoved protesters aside to force a path for traffic to start flowing through the square on Sunday. Protesters chanted "peacefully, peacefully" as the soldiers and military police in red berets moved in to disperse them.
The military police chief told protesters to clear tents from the square and not to disrupt traffic. The army has said it respects the demands of protesters, whose mass action drove Hosni Mubarak from power. But it has also called on them to go home and let normal life resume.
Protesters demand the abolition of emergency law that has been used to stifle dissent for three decades, the release of all political prisoners, and free and fair elections.
Protesters said soldiers had detained some of their leaders and that more than 30 people had been taken to an army holding area around the Egyptian Museum, next to the square.
Egypt's caretaker government met Sunday for the first time, as police launched protests and the Egyptian Museum reported the theft of major treasures.
Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told reporters after the cabinet meeting that his caretaker government's first priority is to restore peace and to facilitate daily life for citizens.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which assumed power when Mubarak stepped down Friday, has said the cabinet will remain in place until the election of a new civilian government.
As the cabinet met, Egypt's minister of state for antiquities Zahi Hawass said that during the revolt several major artifacts had been stolen from the Egyptian museum, including a statue of Tutankhamun, better known as King Tut.
Egypt's police are broadly hated and seen as brutal and corrupt, while the military has been embraced by the anti-regime protesters. But the police protesting on Sunday insisted that they had been ordered to deal harshly with the protests by Mubarak's security services and argued they were underpaid by their corrupt government masters.
Sunday's cabinet meeting came a day after the resignation of the highly unpopular information minister Anas al-Fiki, who was allegedly behind a media campaign that presented the protesters as foreign agents. Fiki, Adly and sacked prime minister Ahmed Nazif have all been banned from leaving the country while they are investigated over graft allegations.
The events in Egypt sent shock-waves abroad. In Yemen, an anti-government protest was broken up on Saturday and in Algiers thousands of police stopped protesters from staging a march.
Source: Agencies
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