Mohamed Elbaradei

Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who formerly headed the U.N. nuclear regulatory agency, has returned to Egypt in a move expected to increase political pressure on President Hosni Mubarak as a new wave of nationwide protests are called for Friday. ElBaradei's presence has energized activists who for months had urged him to take his National Front for Change to the streets. His arrival coincides with a decision by the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition group, to encourage its young members to join the protests.

CAIRO - Islamists have filed defamation suits against Mohamed ElBaradei, claiming the Nobel Peace Prize laureate referred to them as “clowns” and “merchants of religion” in an increasingly tense political atmosphere surrounding the drafting of Egypt's new constitution. State television reported that Islamists have filed at least 40 complaints against ElBaradei for disparaging comments he made at a news conference in southern Egypt last week. The suits reflect the animosity between secularists, such as ElBaradei, and Islamists, who are seeking to instill Sharia law in the constitution.

United Nations atomic energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei urged the international community Thursday to steer away from threats of sanctions against Iran, saying the country's nuclear program was not "an imminent threat" and that the time had come to "lower the pitch" of debate. ElBaradei's remarks at a forum in Doha, the capital of Qatar, came at a sensitive moment in the discussions over Iran, as the United States and other members of the U.N. Security Council calculate their next steps.

  Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei quit the race for the Egyptian presidency Saturday in protest of the military's persistent grip on power despite a year of revolution and political upheaval. ElBaradei's announcement was a strategic and emotional setback for liberal and secular activists who had hoped the former head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency would propel the country toward democratic reforms to replace the corrupt legacy of deposed President Hosni Mubarak.

When tens of thousands of antigovernment protesters filled Cairo's Tahrir Square for 18 tense days and toppled Egypt's brutal dictator early this year, Mohamed ElBaradei visited the street revolutionaries exactly once — briefly — and never went back. Since then, ElBaradei has made repeated appearances on American TV talk shows to portray himself as the leader of Egypt's opposition movement and to argue that he now should become the country's first freely elected president. Revisionism is a recurrent theme in ElBaradei's memoir, "The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.

Mohamed ElBaradei knelt in prayer, then rose and stepped toward a line of riot police. The Nobel Peace laureate moved closer, shrinking the gap between the demonstration he was attempting to lead and the power of the Egyptian state. The police officers lifted their batons. They swung. Water cannon streamed. Tear gas bloomed. The downtown Cairo street erupted, as thousands of protesters, hurling stones and shoes, clashed with police. ElBaradei, drenched, his eyes stinging, was hurried by friends into a nearby mosque.

Far from reactor blueprints and gamma rays, Mohamed ElBaradei slips into a garden between the pyramids and the roar of Cairo. Security guards skim courtyard walls and the conversation turns to politics, which in Egypt can be as combustible as nuclear physics. The former head of the U.N. nuclear agency has returned to his native country to lead a movement demanding reform from President Hosni Mubarak's government, a prospect about as likely to happen as ElBaradei's past attempts to persuade Iran to make its nuclear program transparent.

The Bush administration said Thursday that it was prepared to support a third term for International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, reversing a call for him to step down. ElBaradei, who has run the IAEA since 1997, is now likely to be unanimously approved by the 35 member nations at a board meeting that starts Monday. Differences over Iran and Iraq, where ElBaradei supported extended weapons inspections, were behind a U.S.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei will fly from Vienna to Washington this week to try to win support from the Bush administration, diplomats said. ElBaradei will meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the new undersecretary of State for arms control, Robert G. Joseph, the diplomats said. ElBaradei fell out with the U.S. over what it saw as soft treatment of Iraq and Iran's atomic programs. But the Washington Post reported that the U.S.

The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said he had not seen "any concrete evidence" that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program underway. "We have seen in the past that certain procurements have not been reported to us, certain experiments," Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency told CNN.

When tens of thousands of antigovernment protesters filled Cairo's Tahrir Square for 18 tense days and toppled Egypt's brutal dictator early this year, Mohamed ElBaradei visited the street revolutionaries exactly once — briefly — and never went back. Since then, ElBaradei has made repeated appearances on American TV talk shows to portray himself as the leader of Egypt's opposition movement and to argue that he now should become the country's first freely elected president. Revisionism is a recurrent theme in ElBaradei's memoir, "The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.

"Mission Accomplished" read the hauntingly familiar phrase from Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim on Thursday when the first word came that President Hosni Mubarak might step down. Ghonim delivered the words by Twitter, unlike George W. Bush, who had them printed on a banner. But in both cases, they were premature. As Richard Haass, a former top State Department official who now heads the private Council on Foreign Relations, said in a conference call with reporters last week, if Egypt's revolution were a baseball game, this would only be the third inning.

He arrived uncorrupted and full of promise. Mohamed ElBaradei returned to his native Egypt one year ago to lead a movement to reform the constitution. Crowds greeted the Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the airport. The ruling National Democratic Party worried for the first time in decades that its power might be threatened. But even as Egyptians forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down Friday, the enthusiasm for ElBaradei had dwindled. The 68-year-old diplomat is viewed by many as a reluctant revolutionary, a man who inspired them but didn't lead them into the streets against the police state.

From the American perspective, the transition now underway in Egypt confirms John Kenneth Galbraith's famous appraisal of politics as a choice between "the disastrous and the unpalatable. " What the Obama administration must dread is not the prospect of Cairo repeating the disaster that was Tehran in 1979 but St. Petersburg in 1917, when one revolution ? its leadership democratic but hopelessly divided ? was followed within months by a second, its leaders murderously disciplined and malevolently focused.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak bent to a week of deadly anti-government unrest, announcing in a nationwide speech that he would not seek reelection this year but that he intended to stay in power "for the remaining months" of his fifth term. Mubarak's late-night address, hours after more than 200,000 protesters had streamed into Cairo's central Tahrir Square, marked a dramatic bid to maneuver through a nationwide revolt, growing international pressure and an economy that has slid into turmoil.

History is lurching in the Middle East, perhaps forward, possibly backward. Consequently, some see the newly minted revolution in Tunisia and the unfolding one in Egypt (and possibly Yemen, Jordan and elsewhere) as hopeful news, and others as worrisome. Color me hopeful. Obviously, things can ? and probably will ? get worse before they get better. In one or more countries, we could have a replay of the Iranian revolution, in which justified popular discontent with an authoritarian ruler was exploited by Islamists who ultimately imposed an even crueler brand of tyranny.

Mohamed ElBaradei prides himself on remaining cool under pressure, but he showed unusual flashes of emotion on learning Friday that he and his International Atomic Energy Agency had won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. His eyes misted as he spoke with reporters about the delight -- and surprise -- he felt when he heard on television that he and the U.N. nuclear watchdog he heads had been picked to share the prestigious award.

Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei made his way through the crowd in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Sunday in an appearance that defied the military curfew and President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year regime. "You have taken back your rights and what we have begun cannot go back," ElBaradei told the protesters, according to Al Jazeera reports. "We have one main demand -- the end of the regime and the beginning of a new stage, a new Egypt. ... I bow to the people of Egypt in respect.

The White House on Monday called for negotiations among a broad cross-section of the Egyptian people, including opposition groups, to help resolve the current political crisis. As anti-government demonstrations in Egypt prepared to enter their second week, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters that the Obama administration continued to support the human rights demands by Egyptian protesters including freedom of association, assembly and speech. “Those must be addressed in a substantive way by the Egyptian government,” Gibbs said.

Egypt's military moved more aggressively Sunday to take control over parts of the capital, but the sixth day of unrest ended with increasing questions about how much longer President Hosni Mubarak could withstand calls for his resignation, including an electrifying demand from opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei that he step down to "save the country. " Just hours after fighter jets buzzed overhead and a column of tanks tried to enter Cairo's central Tahrir Square, thousands of protesters defied a government-imposed curfew to gather in a peaceful nighttime demonstration that culminated in the dramatic appearance by ElBaradei.