USA: Relaxing in the White House after the Test of Nerves

President Obama was on a political roller coaster, leaning ever stronger toward distance from Mubarak. This is a moment in which history will be written, proclaimed Barack Obama.

This is a moment, in which history will be written, proclaimed Barack Obama on Thursday at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. It’s unclear if the U.S. president was speaking in regard to his plan to speed Internet access in the Midwest or the revolution in the Middle East and the expected resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. CIA Chief Leon Panetta trumpeted the rumor at a congressional hearing and said there was a strong likelihood Mubarak would step down.

As it emerged, the celebration was premature, about 24 hours too early. After the resignation, the Obama administration in the White House got back to work, perplexed and frustrated, after Mubarak — in his third speech to the Egyptian people since the outbreak of the crisis — had strongly denied any step-down from power. The test of nerves between Washington and Cairo was not over; the political roller coaster of the past weeks resumed again.

The president and his crisis-management group toiled for hours on a formulation and demanded a clarification from Mubarak and the leading protagonists of the regime — however without naming names. “The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy,” the statement, which the White House published on Thursday night, says. Once again, the U.S. government outlined their parameters: lifting of the nearly 30-year state of emergency, forming relations with a broad spectrum of opposition and the civil society, protecting citizens’ rights and forming a plan for free and fair elections.

In a telephone conversation on Friday afternoon, Mubarak told Barack Obama of his actual withdrawal; and in the White House, on the last workday of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, there was a big party.