The Mubarak regime seems to be working with the U.S. administration towards a scheme which, while moving Mubarak aside, would keep the dictatorial system he implemented. More on that below.

In Tahrir square the night was calm and in the morning the crowd there was again growing. People are reinforcing the barricades they had build, expecting more tensions and attacks in the coming days.

Overnight a gas pipeline in north Sinai which delivers natural gas from Egypt to Israel was blown up. It is currently unknown who is responsible for this. There are several potential motives for such an act which do include a regime attempt to create more tensions and international pressure for a false compromise.

As the NYT sells this compromise:

[S]everal groups of prominent intellectuals and political analysts are pushing plans to endorse an initial transfer of power to Mr. Suleiman, who already appears to be governing in Mr. Mubarak’s place, they said.

“The reality on the ground is that the vice president is the one managing the situation and what we want to do is legalize it,” said Wahid Abdel Neguid, the deputy director of the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and one of the figures working on the plans.
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The groups putting forward the proposal include Nabil Fahmy, former Egyptian ambassador to the United States; Naguib Sawiris, one of the most prominent businessmen in Egypt; Ahmed Kamal Aboul Magd, a lawyer and influential Islamic thinker; and Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist.

There is no person of the real opposition included in that group. Issandr at The Arabist has put up an English copy of the groups demands. His source is the Carnegie Endowment:

In view of the high level of interest in the events in Egypt, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offers its readers this unofficial translation of the statements issued by the committee, which have not appeared in English so far. The Carnegie Endowment does not endorse the statements but believes they are of sufficient interest to be shared.

The last sentence is suspicious. From a Washington Post piece which expresses some U.S. administration support for this "wise men" solution:

Members of the group have demanded that Mubarak turn over his authority to Suleiman, who would use it to manage a transition to democracy while Mubarak remains as a figurehead president until new elections.

"It's basically a face-saving solution," said Amr Hamzawy, research director for the Carnegie Middle East Center and one of the participants. Suleiman and Shafiq have been receptive, he said, and there have been "encouraging signs" from Mubarak.

Carnegie "does not endorse" this "face-saving solution" but "was one of the participants"?

This stinks. Reading the Carnegie text commentator Tom at The Arabist remarks:

This is odd. First it calls for pretty much exactly what Suleiman has been calling for. Second, it uses a style and vocabulary that track what he said in a television interview, yesterday.
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I wouldn't put it past the government to be trying to publish false "demands" that suit them perfectly well and then make a big act of "responding to the people's demands".

I think this is more likely along the same lines as the "counter-protesters" — just another attempt on the part of the current power establishment to win the war through empty propaganda and their control of so many communications channels.

I agree with that analysis. Unfortunately it seems that the Egyptian regime has the support of the Obama administration for this scheme. The pro-democracy protesters at Tahrir are unlikely to fall for it.