ElBaradei: I'm Running for President

It's official: Mohamed ElBaradei will run for president of Egypt, he told a private television channel yesterday. "When the door of presidential nominations opens, I intend to nominate myself," the Nobel laureate said. But he also called on the military to scrap or rewrite the "superficial" constitutional reforms it's put forward. ElBaradei currently has no party, but describes himself as a "social democrat," saying "democracy is my program."

The military's constitutional reforms would limit presidents to two four-year terms, and allow independent and opposition candidates to run for office, but they wouldn't change the rules for forming parties, meaning Hosni Mubarak's former party and the Muslim Brotherhood would likely dominate the new government, al-Jazeera explains. "After all this, how can the parliament be representative?" ElBaradei asked. "I can't rule Egypt for one day under this constitution." (More Mohamed ElBaradei stories.)