2010-03-27


CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak left hospital in Germany on Saturday, three weeks after undergoing gall bladder surgery, and was flying home after the longest absence of his nearly three decades in power.

"President Mubarak has departed the hospital now and is on his way to Baden-Baden airport to fly back to Sharm El Sheikh," Information Minister Anas el-Feki told Reuters.

Mubarak, who handed presidential powers just before his operation to Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, will reassume them upon arriving in Egypt, a government official said. He was due to land at 4:30 p.m. (1430 GMT).

His three-week absence hit local financial markets and fuelled political uncertainty as Egyptians were reminded that the president, in power since 1981, has not named a successor.

Egypt's stock market fell sharply in the days after the president's operation to remove benign tissue, before steadying when images of him sitting and chatting with doctors were broadcast.

"Egypt is witnessing a period of instability and the president's absence, especially for health reasons and surgery, has heightened people's worries," Abdel Aziz Husseini, spokesman for the protest movement Kefaya, told Reuters.

"The question is what will happen now that Mubarak has returned. Will he finally assign a vice-president following an absence for health reasons?" said exiled political analyst Saad Eddin Ibrahim, urging Mubarak "to give Egyptians some measure of certainty".

SUCCESSION UNCLEAR

Mubarak has not said whether he plans to run for a sixth six-year term in a presidential election due in 2011. While his son Gamal is widely touted as a successor, both father and son deny such plans.

Possible presidential candidates include former U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who in his first public appearance since returning to Egypt last month was meet by supporters chanting "Your are our hope" at Friday prayers.

Members of Mubarak's National Democratic Party welcomed his return, saying his absence had not shaken stability in Egyptian politics.

"The smooth passing of this period of the president's absence without any kind of a power struggle within Egypt is proof of the political stability of the country and its government," Gihad Oudah, a member of the NDP's policy committee headed by Gamal Mubarak, told Reuters.

Oudah denied there was any "political wrangling" within Egypt and said opposition members like ElBaradei and others had the right to be politically active within the limits of the constitution.

Mubarak's German doctor, Markus Buechler, said in a statement: "The president has fully recovered ... I have recommended however that the president continues his convalesence back home during the coming two weeks before he gradually returns to full and normal activity."