Time for Mubarak to 'step down': US Senator McCain

Google/AFP, Feb. 3, 2011

WASHINGTON — Top US Senator John McCain, shortly after talks with President Barack Obama, urged embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday to "step down and relinquish power."

"Regrettably the time has come 4 Pres Mubarak 2 step down (and) relinquish power," McCain said in a post on the microblogging site Twitter roughly an hour after discussing the bloody political crisis in Egypt with Obama.

"It's in the best interest of Egypt, its people (and) its military," said the lawmaker, Obama's rival for the US presidency in 2008 and the top Republican on the US Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain's comment came as Washington hardened its message to Mubarak after pro-government demonstrators stormed the square that has been ground zero for unprecedented protests against Mubarak's iron-fisted three decades in power.

McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan played down talk of a link between the message and the senator's talks with Obama, saying it came chiefly in response to the bloody clashes in Tahrir Square, which left hundreds wounded.

"Frankly, it's in response to what he has been seeing on TV," she told AFP when asked about the timing. "He is monitoring the situation as the violence continues to escalate."

With only a few exceptions, US lawmakers have mostly backed Obama's handling of the crisis, though some have urged Mubarak to set up a caretaker government before September elections in which he has said he will not run.