The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ "communiqué number five" said a transitional period of military rule would last six months while reforms were put in place to allow free elections
Egypt’s new military rulers on Sunday suspended the constitution and dissolved a parliament dominated by the ruling party of former president Hosni Mubarak, after he was overthrown in the mass revolt on Friday.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' "communiqué number five", which was read out on state television, said a transitional period of military rule would last six months while reforms were put in place to allow free elections. The council announced the suspension of the constitution and said it would "run the affairs of the country on a temporary basis for six months or until the end of parliamentary and presidential elections."
It announced the "dissolution of the lower and upper houses of parliament" and said it would continue to issue decrees during the transitional period.
A committee will also be formed to oversee amendments to the constitution and a popular referendum will be organized to vote on the changes, the council said, in a bid to ease restrictions on presidential candidates.
The statement also confirmed Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi as Egypt's de facto head of state. "The head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will represent the council domestically and internationally," it said, stressing its commitment to international agreements.
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.
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.
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.
PROTESTERS IN SQUARE UNTIL DEMANDS FULFILLED
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.
Egypt's military pledged on Saturday that it would oversee a transition to civilian rule. 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 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 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.
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.
