Washington: The US has called on the Egyptian government to immediately lift the country’s emergency laws, which have been in place for 30 years.
Vice-President Joe Biden made the call during a telephone conversation with his Egyptian counterpart Omar Suleiman.
He also said the police should immediately stop arresting and beating journalists and activists.
Tuesday saw one of the biggest anti-government rallies in Cairo since the protests began on 25 January.
It came despite the government’s announcement of its plans for a peaceful transfer of power.
President Hosni Mubarak has said he will stay in office until elections in September, when he plans to step down.
Biden told Suleiman that the transition to a more broadly based government should produce “immediate, irreversible” progress.
The US vice-president has been phoning his Egyptian opposite number on an almost daily basis and his latest call is the toughest yet, the BBC’s North America editor, Mark Mardell, reports.
Biden said the interior ministry should be restrained immediately and there should be a clear policy of no reprisals.
Separately, President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Suleiman’s remarks about Egypt not being ready for democracy were “particularly unhelpful”.
The focus now seems not to be on President Mubarak and his future but on what the White House calls “concrete reforms”, our North America editor says.
So far the administration’s repeated suggestions over the last week have been met largely by grudging commitments from the Egyptian authorities and little action, he adds.
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