US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described her first talks with Egypt's new president in Cairo as constructive.
Hundreds of people chanted anti-US and anti-Islamist slogans outside her hotel on Saturday as the US secretary of state urged Egypt's military and Muslim Brotherhood to complete a transition to full democratic rule.
Mrs Clinton met Egypt's newly-elected Islamist President Mohammed Mursi and military chief Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi.
After a more than one-hour meeting with Mr Mursi, Mrs Clinton made clear the US wants Egypt's political players to reach some consensus that would lead to genuine democracy, with the military returning to a purely national security role.
But she stressed it was up to the Egyptians themselves to decide how to achieve this, sorting out such questions as what kind of a constitution to draft and when and whether to hold new parliamentary elections.
"Democracy is hard," Mrs Clinton told a news conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr.
"It requires dialogue and compromise and real politics."
Mrs Clinton got a taste of democracy in action when protesters, most of them backers of the old regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, a long-time US ally toppled by popular protests last year, demonstrated outside her five star hotel.
"Get out Hillary," they chanted. "We don't want the Muslim Brotherhood."
Among the signs held up were "America: Support Liberty Not Theocracy" and "Egypt Majority is not Islamist".
Ms Clinton is the most senior US official to meet Mr Mursi, an Islamist who emerged from the country's long-oppressed Muslim Brotherhood movement to be inaugurated as president two weeks ago, after what was regarded as the country's first relatively free and fair presidential election.
The army, in power for six decades, moved to limit the power of the new civilian president even as voters were lining up to elect him.
