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CAIRO, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Demonstrators showed their rejection of the Egyptian government's latest proposed reforms Tuesday, staging the biggest demonstration yet in Cairo. The BBC said hundreds of thousands of protesters jammed Tahrir Square as the army gave up trying to check identity cards. Anti-government demonstrations began Jan. 25.
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President Hosni Mubarak established an advisory committee to revise the Egyptian constitution but al-Masry al-Youm reported opposition and legal experts said they doubted the committee would have much impact.
"The matter does not need a commission," Ibrahim Nawar, official spokesman of the Democratic Front Party, told the Egyptian newspaper. "The regime wants to waste time and to distract us with commissions and dialogues until Mubarak's term in office ends."
Among the proposals the committee, headed by Mubarak supporter Judge Serri Mahmoud Siam, was to study was easing the requirements for presidential candidates, term limits and full judicial oversight of elections.
A protester identified by the BBC only as Mariam rejected the proposal.
"We don't care what they are promising. Our demand is the same: Mubarak must leave," she said.
Human Rights Watch said Tuesday at least 297 people have died in the protests since Jan. 28. HRW said it came up with the number by surveying seven hospitals in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez.
The number of protesters in the square dropped to 1,000 overnight as Cairo attempted to return to normal.
Banks opened for a second day, along with many shops. Cairo's chronic traffic jams returned.
Officials announced the stock market, whose index fell nearly 20 percent in two days of protests, would reopen Sunday and 6 million government employees would receive a 15 percent raise starting in April.
Egypt's state-run news agency said Mubarak ordered Parliament and its highest appellate court to re-examine lower-court rulings over alleged campaign and ballot irregularities that were said to have been ignored by electoral officials -- possibly paving the way for new elections.
Judicial officials also promised to start Tuesday questioning three former ministers and a senior ruling party official accused of corruption, the official Middle East News Agency said.
Mubarak may be making preparations to visit Germany for an "extended medical checkup," German magazine Der Spiegel reported.
"Preliminary talks with appropriate hospitals are ongoing, particularly with the Max Grundig clinic in Buhl" in Germany's southwestern Bade-Wurtemberg region east of the Upper Rhine, the report said.
A German government spokesman said, "There is neither official nor unofficial requests regarding such a stay.
"Therefore there is no reason for the government to concern itself with this hypothetical question," Steffen Seibert, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, said in Berlin.
