Egypt has a plan and timetable for the peaceful transfer of power, the vice president said on Tuesday, adding that the government will not pursue protesters who have been demanding President Hosni Mubarak step down now.

'The president welcomed the national consensus, confirming that we are putting our feet on the right path to getting out of the current crisis,' Vice President Omar Suleiman said after a briefing with the president on the national dialogue meeting.  

Mubarak has formed a panel to oversee constitutional amendments, Suleiman said, as anti-government protests entered their third week. 

'A clear road map has been put in place with a set timetable to realise the peaceful and organised transfer of power,' he said in comments broadcast on state television.

Meanwhile, protesters called for a push on Tuesday to eject Mubarak from power.

The protesters barricaded in a tent camp on Tahrir Square have vowed to stay until Mubarak quits, and hope to take their two-week campaign to the streets with more mass demonstrations on Tuesday and Friday.

Tuesday's demonstrations will test the protesters' ability to maintain pressure on the government after Mubarak, 82, rejected calls to end his 30-year rule now. He has said he will stay until an election in September but will not run in it.

The release of a Google executive, Wael Ghonim, after two weeks in which he said he was kept blindfolded by Egyptian state security may galvanise support.

Activists say the Egyptian was behind a Facebook group that helped to inspire the protests. 'I am not a symbol or a hero or anything like that, but what happened to me is a crime,' he told Dream TV after his release on Monday.

'We have to tear down this system based on not being able to speak out.'     

A posting on the social network site after the interview said: 'Anyone who saw the Wael Ghonim interview and is not going to Tahrir tomorrow (Tuesday) has no heart.'    

In another development, Mubarak met the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates in Cairo, his first high-level overseas visitor since the crisis began. Mubarak met Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahayan at the presidential palace in Cairo.