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Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Egypt's prime minister said some of the thousands involved in days of protests near the U.S. Embassy got paid to participate, state news reported Saturday, the same day riot police managed to force demonstrators from the area.
Ian Lee contributed from Cairo and Hamdi Alkhshali, Joe Sterling from Atlanta. CNN's Amir Ahmed contributed to this rep
Amid uneasy calm in Cairo, prime minister says some were paid to protest
September 16, 2012 -- Updated 0149 GMT (0949 HKT)
Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Egypt's prime minister said some of the thousands involved in days of protests near the U.S. Embassy got paid to participate, state news reported Saturday, the same day riot police managed to force demonstrators from the area.
Prime Minister Hesham
Kandil said "a number" of those involved in the tense, sometimes violent
protests, which began Tuesday, later confessed to getting paid to
participate, according to the state-run Middle East News Agency. He
noted, too, that some of the demonstrators were acting on their own and
weren't paid to vent their anger against the United States over an
inflammatory anti-Islam film that was privately produced in that
country.
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Kandil did not say whether the government knew or suspected who paid the demonstrators, according to the MENA report.
Also Saturday, some
semblance of normalcy finally returned to Cairo after riot police
successfully pushed away demonstrators from the U.S. diplomatic as well
as nearby Tahrir Square.
This action gave crews
the opportunity, finally, to clear debris-strewn streets, local
businesses to assess damages and traffic to begin crawling back to
normal.
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Saturday's protests in
the Egyptian capital were mostly peaceful, though scores of people were
nonetheless arrested and injured in clashes. One death was reported, but
government officials later said it was unrelated to the demonstrations.
Muslims have been livid
over a 14-minute trailer for "Innocence of Muslims," an obscure film
that mocks the Prophet Mohammed as a womanizer, child molester and
ruthless killer.
Two months after the
film's trailer was posted online on YouTube, and days after it got
attention in Egyptian media, Cairo residents first expressed their ire
Tuesday, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks, with
protests targeting the American embassy.
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Outpourings soon spread
like wildfire across the Muslim world. As a result, Western diplomats
found themselves and their missions under siege.
The region has been on
edge after those initial volatile Cairo protests and the killings of
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other American
officials at the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
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Relations between the
United States and Egypt have cooled since the overthrow last year of
ousted President Hosni Mubarak and the election of President Mohamed
Morsy, the country's first democratically elected leader. Before he
became president, he was a leader in the political arm of the Muslim
Brotherhood, the popular Islamist movement.
When protests in Cairo
began Tuesday, police and Egyptian troops formed defensive lines around
the embassy to stop demonstrators from advancing. But they did not
prevent protesters from scaling the embassy fence and placing a black
flag atop a ladder in the American compound.
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Police arrested a
handful of protesters at the time, but the failure of Egyptian
authorities to take action sooner has been widely questioned, as has
initial response from Morsy.
Morsy initially focused
his criticism on the anti-Muslim film as an unacceptable slap at Islam.
But after speaking with U.S. President Barack Obama, Morsy on Thursday
directly criticized the violence
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"Those who are attacking
the embassies do not represent any of us," he said from Brussels,
Belgium, where he was visiting the headquarters of the European Union.
Discussing Egypt's
relationship with the United States, the prime minister, Kandil, said
Egyptian officials believe that Washington is "sincere" in wanting to
foster "good relations," adding that Egypt's chief goal is to create
"balanced relations," the MENA report said.
"Relations between
countries of the so-called Arab Spring and the West have not yet taken
complete shape," Kandil said, stressing this is particularly true of
Egypt.
As this relationship evolves, the prime minister said his country is committed to protecting U.S. diplomats and their missions.
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Until late Saturday,
demonstrations near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo have been persistent and,
at times, violent with scores injured and scores more arrested.
Still, the thousands of protesters represent a fraction of the Egyptian capital's total population of roughly 11 million people.
In Egypt's northern
Sinai, a large number of security forces backed by tanks regained
control of a base housing an international peacekeeping force that was
breached Friday by Islamist militants.
Carrying automatic weapons, the militants burned trucks and a watch tower on the base, Egyptian media said.
The 1,500-troop
Multinational Force & Observers mission has supervised the security
of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty since 1979.
The force said in a statement that a demonstration on Saturday outside its North Camp in el Gorah "turned violent."
"Individuals throwing
Molotov cocktails and explosive devices breached the camp's perimeter.
The breach was quickly contained by the professional actions of MFO
personnel," the force said in a statement.
It reported eight minor
injuries to force members and damage to vehicles and property. There had
been a news report of an injury to an Islamist Bedouin, but the MFO
said intruders left "with no known injury." The situation stabilized
after Egyptian authorities "helped secure the camp's perimeter."
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Militants have threatened the observers before, saying they would attack if they didn't leave.
"The MFO views these
events with the gravest concern and is coordinating with Egyptian
authorities regarding strengthened measures to secure MFO premises and
personnel, and to ensure that the MFO mission may continue securely and
effectively," it said.
Egyptian security has
been fighting militants in Sinai since August. That's when 16 border
guards were killed in an attack by Islamist militants.
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