CAIRO (Reuters) – After six decades under the thumb of men from the military, Egyptians savour the novel experience this week of a presidential election whose outcome no one knows in advance.

They vote on Wednesday and Thursday for a leader to replace Hosni Mubarak, who was swept away 15 months ago by a popular revolt that ushered in a turbulent military-led transition and elections for a parliament now dominated by Islamists.

No real power has yet changed hands. An army council led by the man who served as Mubarak’s defence minister for 20 years still holds the reins, promising to hand over by July 1 after a new president is elected, probably in a run-off vote in June.

Opinion polls are untested. Previous post-Mubarak votes – the parliamentary poll won by the Muslim Brotherhood trailed by its hardline Salafi rivals, and an earlier referendum that overwhelmingly approved army-proposed interim constitutional changes opposed by liberals – may be no guide this time round.

Like other Arab states where pent-up rage from political and economic frustrations erupted last year, Egypt is struggling to define its future after its dazzling moment of promise.

Months of tussles and fluid alliances involving the army, Islamists, protesters and others have bewildered many Egyptians and disillusioned some of the young people who helped topple Mubarak.

Many hope their country can one day regain its primacy in the Arab world, effectively lost when then-President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and the most populous Arab nation became a linchpin of Washington’s Middle East policy and the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel.

CAIRO/LONDON (Reuters) – Military police idly guard the gates of Egypt’s presidential palace in Heliopolis, built as a 400-room luxury hotel in 1910 and vacant since a popular uprising deposed Hosni Mubarak 15 months ago.

Egyptians, who never stormed in to gawk and plunder their fallen leader’s home as Tunisians and Libyans did last year, vote on May 23 and 24 for a new president, the latest stage of an uncertain transition guided bumpily by the military.

People who live in the wealthy Cairo district around the palace are delighted to be spared the road closures that snarled traffic for hours every time Mubarak went anywhere.

But some, such as 24-year-old Sara Hussein, find it harder to perceive any other changes wrought by the uprising she had so ardently supported. “Like everything, the palace is still not free of the Mubaraks. The palace, and the country, are not for the people,” she says. “His regime is still in power.”

Still, Egypt will soon have a freely elected – and probably civilian – president for the first time in the republic’s 60-year history, assuming the generals who sealed Mubarak’s fate by refusing to shoot at crowds baying for his downfall keep their promise to hand over by July 1.

Little else is clear. Attempts to craft a new constitution have stalled. No one knows how power will be divided between the president and parliament, dominated by Islamists.

The military, wary of Islamists and jealous of its own power, perks and privileges, may step back from day-to-day affairs but is likely to seek an as-yet undefined political role, seeing itself as the paternal guardian of the state.

LONDON (Reuters) – Having crushed a popular uprising, he rules by force over an Arab land shattered by conflict and sanctions, his people too exhausted and cowed to resist.

Is this the fate awaiting Syria under Bashar al-Assad?

Saddam Hussein lasted for 12 years after his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War until a U.S.-led invasion unleashed chaos and carnage from which Iraq, for all its oil, has yet to recover.

The trajectories of the two Baathist leaders are far from parallel, but Saddam’s prolonged survival is a warning to anyone who believes Assad will fall simply because he has alienated the West and its Arab allies or earned the hatred of countless Syrians, including perhaps most of its Sunni Muslim majority.

Kofi Annan’s U.N.-backed ceasefire may temporarily calm a conflict that has already cost more than 9,000 dead, but it is hard to see a compromise emerging between Assad’s ruling Alawite elite and those bent on ending its four decades in power.

After so much blood, both sides now see it as a life or death struggle from which they cannot step back, and the United Nations lacks the international consensus to make them.

Time may not be on Assad’s side, but while the 46-year-old president hangs on, sectarian rifts he has exploited are likely to widen as Syria descends towards all-out civil war.

LONDON (Reuters) – Having crushed a popular uprising, he rules by force over an Arab land shattered by conflict and sanctions, his people too exhausted and cowed to resist.

Is this the fate awaiting Syria under Bashar al-Assad?

Saddam Hussein lasted for 12 years after his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War until a U.S.-led invasion unleashed chaos and carnage from which Iraq, for all its oil, has yet to recover.

The trajectories of the two Baathist leaders are far from parallel, but Saddam’s prolonged survival is a warning to anyone who believes Assad will fall simply because he has alienated the West and its Arab allies or earned the hatred of countless Syrians, including perhaps most of its Sunni Muslim majority.

Kofi Annan’s U.N.-backed ceasefire may temporarily calm a conflict that has already cost more than 9,000 dead, but it is hard to see a compromise emerging between Assad’s ruling Alawite elite and those bent on ending its four decades in power.

After so much blood, both sides now see it as a life or death struggle from which they cannot step back, and the United Nations lacks the international consensus to make them.

Time may not be on Assad’s side, but while the 46-year-old president hangs on, sectarian rifts he has exploited are likely to widen as Syria descends towards all-out civil war.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan feels his Syria mediation mission is on track even though violence still raged as he held talks with President Bashar al-Assad, his spokesman said on Monday.

Annan twice met Assad in Damascus, as well as opposition figures, at the weekend and saw Qatari leaders in Doha on Monday before heading to Turkey.

Before he went to Syria, he held separate talks with the Arab League chief and the foreign ministers of Russia and Saudi Arabia in Cairo, his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said.

“This is the beginning of a process and the joint special envoy feels the process is on the right track,” Fawzi told Reuters by telephone from Qatar.

“He has left a set of concrete proposals with Bashar on a cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access and political dialogue, and expects to hear from him shortly,” Fawzi said.

“He is concerned that the fighting and the killing seem to be continuing while he is trying to put an end to it and while he is trying to talk to Bashar,” he said.

Scores of people were reported killed in Syria during Annan’s visit, when the military assaulted the rebel-held city of Idlib in the northwest. State media and opposition activists also said dozens of civilians were slain in Homs but gave conflicting accounts of who was responsible.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan held blunt talks with Bashar al-Assad this weekend but appeared to be making little headway, as the Syrian president blamed political bloodshed on “terrorists”.

Annan on Saturday made proposals on stopping the violence between security forces and the opposition in the year-old revolt against Assad, access for humanitarian agencies, release of detainees and the start of political dialogue.

The talks were “candid and comprehensive”, a spokesman quoted Annan as saying. He was to meet Assad again on Sunday before leaving Syria for Qatar.

Assad told U.N./Arab League envoy Annan Syria was “ready to make a success of any honest effort to find a solution for the events it is witnessing”, state news agency SANA reported.

“No political dialogue or political activity can succeed while there are armed terrorist groups operating and spreading chaos and instability,” he said.

Thousands have been killed in Syria since a popular uprising against Assad erupted a year ago.

While Annan and Assad discussed the crisis, Syrian troops were assaulting the northwestern city of Idlib, a rebel bastion.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday to press for a political solution to Syria’s year-long uprising and bloody crackdown in which thousands of people have been killed.

Syrian television reported that the two men had begun talks in the presidential palace. Annan met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Cairo before flying to Damascus in a mark of the pivotal part Moscow, one of Assad’s few foreign friends, could play in a solution.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov had reiterated Moscow’s calls for an end to violence and the start of dialogue, and emphasized its opposition to foreign interference. Annan “confirmed his intention of interacting actively with Russia in resolving the Syrian crisis”, a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

Annan also plans to meet Syrian dissidents before leaving Damascus on Sunday. He has called for a political solution, but the opposition says the time for dialogue is over.

“We support any initiative that aims to stop the killings but we reject it if it is going to give Bashar more time to break the revolution and keep him in power,” Melham al-Droubi, a Saudi-based member of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the exiled Syrian National Council, told Reuters by telephone.

“We hope that Annan convinces Bashar to stop the killings, step down and call for a parliamentary election,” he said, expressing skepticism that Assad would respond positively.

VIOLENT DAY

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan arrived in Damascus on Saturday to press President Bashar al-Assad for a political solution to Syria’s year-long uprising and bloody crackdown in which thousands of people have been killed.

Airport sources said Annan headed for a hotel after Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad met him at the airport.

Annan’s trip to Damascus followed a violent day in which activists said Assad’s forces killed at least 72 people as they bombarded parts of the rebellious city of Homs and sought to deter demonstrators and crush insurgents elsewhere.

Arab foreign ministers were due to hold talks in Cairo with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Russia and China vetoed a U.N. draft resolution last month which would have backed an Arab League plan calling for Assad to step aside.

Decisive victory has eluded both sides in an increasingly deadly struggle that began as a mainly peaceful protest movement a year ago and now appears to be sliding into civil war.

The United Nations estimates that Syrian security forces have killed well over 7,500 people. Syria said in December that “terrorists” had killed more than 2,000 soldiers and police.

“IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE”

LONDON (Reuters) – As tensions over Iran’s nuclear program ratchet higher once again, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s aversion for the West remains a formidable barrier to any diplomatic solution.

A visit by U.N. nuclear inspectors to Iran last week, a few days after Tehran wrote to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton promising “new initiatives” in negotiations, suggests the door to diplomacy has not slammed shut.

Harsher Western sanctions are damaging Iran’s economy and Israel is debating military action, with or without a U.S. green light, lending fresh urgency to efforts to defuse the crisis over the Islamic Republic’s sensitive nuclear activity.

Yet a sea change in policy seems unlikely while the tall, bearded Khamenei, 72, holds power in a country whose Shi’ite Muslim religious leadership has made “Death to America, death to Israel” its mantra since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

In February Khamenei said sanctions would not alter Iran’s nuclear course, military threats would “harm America” and any nation or group fighting Israel, thought to be the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed power, would have Tehran’s backing.

“In response to threats of oil embargo and war, we have our own threats to impose at the right time,” he declared.

Khamenei has in the past denied that Iran seeks atomic bombs, saying: “It is against our Islamic thoughts.”

BEIRUT, March 1 (Reuters) – Elite Syrian forces trying to destroy rebels besieged in Homs pounded the shattered district of Baba Amro on Thursday, despite international alarm at the plight of civilians trapped there.

Snow blanketed the city, slowing down the military assault, but also worsening conditions for civilians, activists said.

“We have not seen such snow in Homs in years. The bombardment on Baba Amro and other parts of the city is continuing but the fighting has subsided after the army was repelled yesterday,” activist Abu Imad said from Homs.

He said casualties on both sides had been heavy, but no tally was available because of the fighting and bad weather.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is increasingly isolated in his struggle to crush an armed insurrection that now spearheads an almost year-long uprising against his 11-year rule.

But Russia, China and Cuba voted against a resolution, adopted overwhelmingly by the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, that condemned Syria for violations that may amount to crimes against humanity.

A senior official in the rebel Free Syrian Army told Reuters that outgunned fighters in Baba Amro were fending off more than 7,000 government troops. Opposition forces had promised to step up attacks elsewhere in Syria to try to relieve the pressure.