ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: DEBKAfile
27January2011 12:59pmEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: Mubarak has sent his defense minister Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi to Washington with an urgent request for US backing for his embattled regime against the street protest movement which gained in violence on its second day, Wednesday, Jan. 
26.
DEBKAfile's Washington sources report that in secret meetings, the Egyptian defense minister put the situation before President Barack Obama and a row of top US political, military and intelligence officials. He warned them that by advocating a soft hand with the demonstrators and responsiveness to their demands, American officials were doing more harm than good. Without a crackdown, he said, the regime was doomed.
Tantawi also warned that the radical Muslim Brotherhood, which has stood aside from the opposition protests, was merely biding its time for the right moment to step in and take over. He asked the Obama administration for an urgent airlift of advanced riot control equipment.
The American response to the case presented by Tantawi is not known. Disclosure of his trip to Washington might well add fuel to the fires of disaffection burning in cities across Egypt. The protests are spearheaded by a youth opposition coalition whose members are proud of their Arab and Egyptian identity. Evidence of the regime's collaboration with a foreign power may well heighten their resolve to battle the regime and the million security services agents which Mubarak put on the streets Wednesday. (read full report)
