Mubarak vows to fight on

Despite today’s ruptures, Hosni Mubarak has vowed to stay on until there can be an ordered transfer of power.  

His defiance will sound familiar to western ears: a lame duck politician determined to cling to the final vestiges of office. But, of course, in Egypt, Mubarak’s intransigence poses far more serious questions. It is hard to see how the optimistic tension that has built over the past three weeks will not now spoil into violence. The army has sustained the Egyptian regime for close to sixty years; but its responsibilities have now become much more complicated.