You guys are cracking me up. Too funny!
CAIRO (Reuters) - The Egyptian cabinet offered its resignation Friday, clearing the way for President Hosni Mubarak to name new ministers with the emphasis on stimulating the economy, officials said.
Planning Minister Osman Mohamed Osman said resignation was the purpose of a special cabinet session Friday evening.
"The meeting was for the government to present its resignation and that has happened," Osman said.
Communications Minister Ahmed Nazif, tipped as a possible prime minister, left the cabinet meeting early and officials said he was going to the presidency.
Mubarak, who returned from back surgery in Germany only on Wednesday, now has a free hand to name a new cabinet and is expected to replace about 14 of the current 27 ministers, including outgoing prime minister Atef Obeid.
A cabinet reshuffle has been expected on and off for months and was about to take place when Mubarak flew to Germany at short notice on June 20 because of a slipped disc.
Some opposition figures have called the reshuffle an attempt to deflect criticism of Mubarak, who has led the most populous Arab country for the past 22 years.
The prime minister and his cabinet do not have much influence over major affairs of state, such as foreign relations, defense or the political system.
Those decisions are in the hands of Mubarak and his close advisers, some of whom are not well known.
The semi-official al-Ahram newspaper Friday said that after the reshuffle Obeid, 72, would probably occupy a new economic post reporting directly to the 76-year-old president.
A new premier would probably be chosen and could be brought in from outside the present government, it added.
But Nazif's departure from the meeting was understood as confirmation of speculation that he was under consideration for the premiership, officials said.
Nazif, 52, studied computer engineering at McGill University in Canada and played a leading role in introducing the Egyptian bureaucracy to information technology.
Al-Ahram said: "It is expected that about 14 new ministers will enter the new government, representing about half the current number of ministers." The aim is to pump "youthful and fresh blood" into the administration, it added.
Already, at the end of June, Safwat el-Sherif resigned as information minister after 22 years in the job.
The nation of 70 million has faced pressure from Washington to undertake political reform. But a reshuffle will not meet opposition parties' demands.
Mubarak may run for a fifth term in 2005. He has not appointed a vice president and has no obvious successor.
Atef Obeid, a former academic and business consultant, took the premiership in 1999 with a mandate to expand the country's economic reform program.
But the privatization program has ground to a halt and growth has not been enough in recent years to absorb all the young Egyptians entering the labor market.