The motorcade — armored, but not overly conspicuous in the snarled traffic — stopped at the edge of Tahrir Square on Wednesday morning, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton emerged for a stroll through the symbolic heart of an uprising that toppled an autocratic government the United States had long supported.
“To see where this revolution happened, and all that it has meant to the world, is extraordinary for me,” Mrs. Clinton said in a scrum of security guards, journalists and curious passers-by who ambled with her for 10 minutes through the square, which was cleared of the last protesters a week ago by the army.
Mrs. Clinton’s walk — symbolic and scripted, though not announced — reflected the fine diplomatic line that the Obama administration has had to walk as the democratic aspirations that have upturned the Arab world have given way here to wariness, in Bahrain to foreign intervention and in Libya to a merciless military suppression.
Mrs. Clinton is the highest-ranking American official to visit Egypt since the wave of popular revolt began in Tunisia in January. That wave has eroded the pillars of American diplomacy in the region, which Mrs. Clinton, as the top American diplomat, must now try to rebuild.
Even as she embraces the changes in Egypt and in Tunisia, which she will also visit this week, the popular uprisings in Libya, Yemen and Bahrain have been met with force — violently and, so far, successfully.
In Bahrain, the Obama administration encouraged King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa to negotiate with the protesters, but it has stood by ineffectually as the king instead invited two American allies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to send troops to back up the brutal assault his security forces carried out on protesters in the capital, Manama, on Wednesday.
When Mrs. Clinton met with Egypt’s interim prime minister, Essam Abdel-Aziz Sharif, who was appointed only two weeks ago, she described the challenges facing Egypt in a way that could apply equally to the Obama administration as it scrambles to cope with the region’s tumult.
“I was just saying to one of the ministers that we have an expression: It’s like drinking from a fire hose,” she said on Wednesday. “There is so much to be done.”
Mrs. Clinton, like President Obama, hesitated at first when President Hosni Mubarak’s rule was threatened by the protests in Tahrir Square, but she now fully embraces the transformation in Egypt. Mrs. Clinton used her two-day visit here to praise the changes, while avoiding taking sides in the internal debate over the pace of constitutional amendments and elections.
“We don’t have an opinion,” she said on Tuesday night about the specifics of the transition. “We have a clear message of support for what the Egyptians decide is in their own best interest.”
Egyptians will vote on Saturday in a referendum that will shape the country’s post-Mubarak government. Leaders of the youth movements that forced Mr. Mubarak to step down say they are worried that the referendum is being held too soon, and some American officials privately agree. Their fear is that it will work to the advantage of the most established political organizations: the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.
Not having an opinion, though, arguably amounts to siding with the interim military government’s plans for a quick transition, which some here worry could cripple democracy in its infancy. “There’s no question this is very fast,” said a senior aide traveling with Mrs. Clinton, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe her private discussions.
The Obama administration, however, has calculated that the United States can best use its influence by expressing broad support for democracy here and elsewhere, while avoiding the details of how to achieve it. “We have to be much more careful how much we inject ourselves,” another senior aide said before the trip.
By design, Mrs. Clinton arrived with an announcement of millions of dollars in American economic assistance.
Mrs. Clinton herself received a stark reminder of the American legacy here — and the work she has to do to overcome it — when she met for two hours on Tuesday night with a group of democracy and human rights advocates in her hotel on the Nile. Gamila Ismail, a prominent politician who joined the protest movement, opened the meeting with a pointed critique of American support for Mr. Mubarak, which continued until the eve of his departure.
As much as the administration eventually pushed for Mr. Mubarak to step aside, many Egyptians remember more vividly Mrs. Clinton’s remarks on Jan. 25, as street protests boiled over into an uprising. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people,” she said then.
Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who also attended the meeting with Mrs. Clinton, said Wednesday that those remarks were “a cause for widespread disappointment and criticism in Egypt.” At the meeting here, he said, she spoke of the “difficult balance” of the American role as a result of decades of diplomacy.
“She acknowledged the legitimacy of this concern,” he added, referring to the support for Mr. Mubarak, “but she stressed that the U.S. has done more to promote democracy in Egypt than any other country.”
Those in the meeting also raised the subjects of American support for other autocratic rulers in the region, the violence in Libya and Bahrain and the perception that the United States had failed to press for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Bahgat said he urged Mrs. Clinton to use the United States’ “unparalleled access” to Egyptian military leaders to bring an end to military tribunals and the torture of detainees in the country.
He also presented her with a dossier on the last Egyptian being held at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Tariq Mahmoud al-Sawah, and told her that he should either be tried or released. “It is an important symbolic message that the U.S. does not condone indefinite detention — either by the Egyptian government or their own,” he said.
Mrs. Clinton, highly visible in a bright red blazer and ever the campaigner, appeared to relish her visit to Tahrir Square. Two Egyptian employees of the American Embassy escorted her, pointing out the places where the pivotal events of January and February occurred. Many people who happened upon her entourage in the square pressed close to take pictures with cellphones. “Wonderful to be here,” she said, waving and shaking hands.
As she ended her stroll, a man clambered onto a planter close enough to ask her if she knew the tale of Omar, the second caliph of Islam, and the Persian assassin who was sent to kill him as he slept under a tree. When the assassin admitted his intentions and repented, Omar let him live, “because he was just,” the man said as her guards ushered her back to her armored Cadillac.
He then shouted, “Thank you for walking the streets of Tahrir.”