"White House sees no scenario in which Mr. Mubarak remains in power"

Mubarak Offers to Negotiate
By MARGARET COKER and CHARLES LEVINSON in Cairo and ADAM ENTOUS and JONATHAN WEISMAN

The U.S. and its allies have started discussing how Mr. Mubarak might step aside or at least not run in national elections set for September, according to Western diplomats.

Participants in a private meeting Monday morning at the White House's Roosevelt Room said a long discussion of Mr. Mubarak's future left them with the understanding that the White House sees no scenario in which Mr. Mubarak remains in power for long. White House officials said they made no explicit predictions about Mr. Mubarak's future.

At the meeting, National Security Council official Dan Shapiro opened the discussion by saying time was of the essence. Already, demands for Mr. Mubarak's removal have escalated into demands that he be tried, and experts told White House officials that the prospects for violence were increasing.

NSC officials, pressed by participants, said they had no contingency plans for a sudden collapse of the Mubarak government. The administration has so far stopped short of calling for Mr. Mubarak to step down.

The Obama administration dispatched a former ambassador to Egypt, Frank Wisner, to Cairo to press for democratic reforms, officials said, another sign the U.S. was taking a more hands-on role in trying to end the crisis.

A White House official said the administration was reaching out to a "broad cross-section of opposition and non-governmental actors."

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