German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Saturday for an orderly transition in Egypt, rejecting calls for immediate elections and saying Europe should not seek to set the agenda in the Arab world, reported dpa.
"There has to be some orderly transition process in place to avoid a total vacuum of power," Merkel told the Munich Security Conference.
"I believe a very quick election as a start for the democratization process is wrong," she added.
Merkel drew from her own experience as a young politician in once communist East Germany when, she said, her West German colleagues sought to tell her party what to do ahead of unification - to caution Western leaders against attempting to dictate events in Egypt or elsewhere.
"People in Egypt are not just waiting for advice to come," she said. We should "listen to the people, not tell them what they should think."
Merkel made her comments as anti-government protesters took to the streets of Cairo for a 12th day in a row, despite President Hosny Mubarak's promise not to seek another term in office in September.
Europe and the United States have been piling pressure on Mubarak to introduce democratic reforms and show greater respect for human rights, but have so far refrained from asking him to step down immediately.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who was also in Munich to take part in a debate on global security, said it was not Europe's role "to point fingers and say which leader should go."
At the same time, "this regime must opt for political reform" rather than repression, Cameron said.
Merkel and Cameron, who belong to Europe's conservative camp, both stressed the need to uphold human rights, regardless of what form of government may be in place in a particular country.
"Simply exporting Western-style democracy on a one-on-one basis may perhaps not work all over the world," Merkel said. At the same time, there is "one red line" that cannot be crossed: the United Nations convention on human rights.
Cameron, for his part, focussed on the failures of "state multiculturalism," arguing that governments should become less tolerant towards those who refuse to respect women or integrate in society.
This year's edition of the Munich Security Conference has been overshadowed by the turmoil in Egypt, a topic which has featured prominently on the agenda in the southern German city since the start of the meeting Friday.
On Saturday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opened a discussion on transatlantic security by referring to the protests in the Arab world, which he said were driven by "human insecurity" and "poverty" but also "corruption" and a "deficit of democracy."
The head of the UN said world powers should step up their efforts at "preventive diplomacy" rather than wait for crises to unfold.
On Friday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that the turmoil in the Arab world risked destabilizing the global order as he urged European governments not to slash their defence budgets.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was next in line to take part in the conference.
The afternoon was to see a meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet - which comprises the EU, Russia, the United States and the United Nations - on the sidelines of the conference.
Also Saturday, Clinton was to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and exchange documents on New START, which replaces the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
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