Omar Suleiman

Omar Suleiman, Egypt's former spymaster and a confidant of deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, died Thursday in a U.S. hospital, months after his unsuccessful presidential bid to restore the old guard to power after a national revolution, state media reported. He was 76. There were conflicting reports about the cause of death. The Egyptian Embassy in Washington said Suleiman died of a blood illness, according to the Ahram Online news website. The state news agency MENA reported that he died of a heart attack while undergoing tests in a Cleveland hospital.

Omar Suleiman, Egypt's former spymaster and a confidant of deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, died Thursday in a U.S. hospital, months after his unsuccessful presidential bid to restore the old guard to power after a national revolution, state media reported. He was 76. There were conflicting reports about the cause of death. The Egyptian Embassy in Washington said Suleiman died of a blood illness, according to the Ahram Online news website. The state news agency MENA reported that he died of a heart attack while undergoing tests in a Cleveland hospital.

He appears briefly on TV, not saying much, if anything at all, and then fades into the secrecy and quiet diplomacy that men like him prefer. One day he's in Jerusalem, the next in Gaza, then back to Egypt to whisper in the ear of his boss, President Hosni Mubarak. Omar Suleiman, the head of Egypt's foreign intelligence service, has been at Mubarak's side through triumph and crisis, including a 1995 ambush on the president's motorcade that killed two security officers.

Like savvy boxers with knockout punches, Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, and the Muslim Brotherhood have circled each other warily since the Arab Spring toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. But after the SCAF-appointed election commission's banning last week of 10 candidates for the May presidential elections, including the Brotherhood's nominee, Khairat Shater, the phase of circumspection may be ending. Egyptians could be in for rougher times. The SCAF abandoned Mubarak only after it realized that Egyptian protesters would not succumb to intimidation and force.

CAIRO - The well-tailored spy and the dueling Islamists are out. Egypt's election commission Tuesday upheld its decision to disqualify three key presidential candidates: Omar Suleiman, former intelligence chief and vice president; Khairat Shater, onetime political prisoner and Muslim Brotherhood financier; and Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an anti-Western ultraconservative preacher. The outcome was largely expected after the candidates appealed the commission's Saturday ruling.

The trial of former President Hosni Mubarak took a scintillating turn Wednesday when the top general in Egypt's ruling military council was summoned to testify next week about the crackdown that killed hundreds of protesters in last winter's revolution. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi is to sit across from his deposed boss in closed sessions, as will former vice president and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Tantawi and Suleiman have loomed over the nation for decades and are inextricably linked to Mubarak's repressive rule.

CAIRO - Egypt's volatile presidential race was jolted Saturday when the election commission disqualified three controversial front-runners - the nation's former spy chief and two impassioned Islamists - just five weeks before voters go to the polls. The commission removed Omar Suleiman, the intelligence director under deposed President Hosni Mubarak; Khairat Shater, a leading voice for the ascendant Muslim Brotherhood; and Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Salafi Islamist with wide populist appeal.

When Hosni Mubarak's car came under a hailstorm of bullets in Addis Ababa nearly 10 years ago, the Egyptian president survived the assassination attempt thanks to a little-known man named Omar Suleiman. Intelligence chief Suleiman had persuaded Mubarak to fly his armored Mercedes from Cairo to Ethiopia rather than ride in the unarmored vehicle offered by his hosts. Suleiman was sitting next to the president when Islamist gunmen opened fire.

The top State Department official on human rights called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday night to hold accountable any government forces that participated in the violent attacks in Cairo. "We condemn that violence," said Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights, and labor, at an event honoring an Egyptian journalist and an Egyptian human rights attorney. "To the extent that government forces are implicated in attacking peaceful demonstrators, journalists and the like, President Mubarak and the government have a responsibility to hold those people accountable," said Posner, as he accepted an award from the Project on Middle East Democracy at the National Press Club.

Fourteen months after the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, a new Egypt is still a work in progress -- or possibly regress. The opposition that swelled Cairo's Tahrir Square has fractured into Islamist and secular factions. The Islamist-dominated parliament continues to compete for influence with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. And last week a presidential election scheduled for May was thrown into confusion. First an administrative court suspended the work of a 100-member assembly charged with writing a new constitution, raising the possibility that a president will be elected before the nature of the new Egyptian state is defined.

CAIRO - The well-tailored spy and the dueling Islamists are out. Egypt's election commission Tuesday upheld its decision to disqualify three key presidential candidates: Omar Suleiman, former intelligence chief and vice president; Khairat Shater, onetime political prisoner and Muslim Brotherhood financier; and Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an anti-Western ultraconservative preacher. The outcome was largely expected after the candidates appealed the commission's Saturday ruling.

Fourteen months after the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, a new Egypt is still a work in progress -- or possibly regress. The opposition that swelled Cairo's Tahrir Square has fractured into Islamist and secular factions. The Islamist-dominated parliament continues to compete for influence with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. And last week a presidential election scheduled for May was thrown into confusion. First an administrative court suspended the work of a 100-member assembly charged with writing a new constitution, raising the possibility that a president will be elected before the nature of the new Egyptian state is defined.

CAIRO - Egypt's volatile presidential race was jolted Saturday when the election commission disqualified three controversial front-runners - the nation's former spy chief and two impassioned Islamists - just five weeks before voters go to the polls. The commission removed Omar Suleiman, the intelligence director under deposed President Hosni Mubarak; Khairat Shater, a leading voice for the ascendant Muslim Brotherhood; and Hazem Salah abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Salafi Islamist with wide populist appeal.

CAIRO - Egypt's curious gallery of presidential candidates reveals how much the nation has changed yet how deeply it still echoes with voices connected to the repressive rule of deposed President Hosni Mubarak. The country's revolution brought new faces, including Khairat Shater, onetime political prisoner now running as a candidate for the Muslim Brotherhood. But the revolt failed to sweep away prominent, if shadowy, challengers from the past, most notably Omar Suleiman, the former leader's spymaster and confidant.

The trial of former President Hosni Mubarak took a scintillating turn Wednesday when the top general in Egypt's ruling military council was summoned to testify next week about the crackdown that killed hundreds of protesters in last winter's revolution. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi is to sit across from his deposed boss in closed sessions, as will former vice president and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Tantawi and Suleiman have loomed over the nation for decades and are inextricably linked to Mubarak's repressive rule.

"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.

Reporting from Marquette, Mich., and Los Angeles President Obama, who earlier Thursday called for an orderly transition in Egypt, will meet with his national security team to discuss the situation when he returns to the White House tonight, officials said. Aboard Air Force One, Obama watched President Hosni Mubarak tell Egypt that he was staying in office until elections in September, but would transfer some authority to his new vice president, Omar Suleiman. Mubarak's televised speech was less than many protesters in Tahrir Square had sought.

The White House said on Monday that there has been some progress in discussions to resolve Egypt's political crisis, but it insisted definitive actions were needed. As protests in Cairo prepared to enter the third week, President Obama told reporters there has been progress among those negotiating what lies ahead for Egypt. "Obviously Egypt has to negotiate a path and they're making progress," Obama said after completing a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Briefing reporters later, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the United States "policy toward Egypt is we watch and we are strongly encouraging the process of meaningful change ... transpiring and resulting in a more open and transparent society.

Less than 24 hours after a patronizing speech in which he insisted he wouldn't resign, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fled his palace by helicopter and left it to his newly appointed vice president to tell the nation he had turned power over to the military. The dramatic end to Mubarak's 30 years in power came after a day of widespread confusion over who really ruled Egypt, and massive demonstrations that spread far from Cairo's central Tahrir Square, the nerve center of the protests for more than two weeks.

Reporting from Marquette, Mich., and Los Angeles President Obama, who earlier Thursday called for an orderly transition in Egypt, will meet with his national security team to discuss the situation when he returns to the White House tonight, officials said. Aboard Air Force One, Obama watched President Hosni Mubarak tell Egypt that he was staying in office until elections in September, but would transfer some authority to his new vice president, Omar Suleiman. Mubarak's televised speech was less than many protesters in Tahrir Square had sought.