Secretary of State John Kerry will stress the importance Egypt achieves political consensus for painful economic reforms needed to secure an IMF loan, a senior U.S. official said on Saturday.

Kerry arrived in Egypt on his first visit to the Arab world since taking office for talks with the leaders of a country mired in political and economic crisis two years after the overthrow of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

With Egypt's pound and foreign currency reserves sliding, the official said that if Cairo could agree on a $4.8 billion loan from the IMF, this would bring in other funds from the United States, European Union and Arab countries.

However, the official said the United States believed Egypt needed to increase tax revenues and reduce energy subsidies - measures likely to prove highly unpopular.

"His basic message is it's very important to the new Egypt for there to be a firm economic foundation," the official told reporters as Kerry flew to Cairo.

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"In order for there to be agreement on doing the kinds of economic reforms that would be required under an IMF deal there has to be a basic political ... agreement among all of the various players in Egypt," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Egypt said on Thursday it would invite a team from the International Monetary Fund to reopen talks on the loan and the investment minister expressed hope that a deal could be done by the end of April.

The loan was agreed in principle last November but put on hold at Cairo's request during street violence the following month that flared in protest at a planned rise in taxes.

While the tax rise was withdrawn, Islamist President Mohamed Mursi is likely to face violent protests as any cuts in subsidies demanded by the IMF will push up living costs in a country where poverty is rife.

Energy subsidies soak up about 20 percent of the government budget, bloating a deficit set to soar to 12.3 percent of annual economic output this financial year.

Clashes in Mansoura, Port Said
Early on Saturday, young protesters fought interior ministry police in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, where one protester was killed and dozens injured. In the Suez Canal city of Port Said, protesters torched a police station, security sources said.

While the protests were unrelated to Kerry's visit, they were examples of the frequent outbreaks of unrest faced by Egypt's government.

Clashes are commonplace, with young people and Egyptians demanding Mursi reform the interior ministry's police force. The president is accused of not taking police reform, a key demand of the uprising that toppled Mubarak, seriously.

Kerry will stress the need for agreement across the political spectrum on reforms and winning approval in the Shura Council, Egypt's upper house of parliament.

"What they need to do is ... things like increasing tax revenues, reducing energy subsidies, making clear what the approval process will be to the Shura Council for an IMF agreement, that kind of thing," said the official.

Hopes for consensus between the ruling Islamists and opposition parties seem slim. Liberal and leftist opposition parties have announced a boycott of parliamentary elections, scheduled for April to June, over a new constitution produced by an Islamist-dominated assembly and other grievances.

Kerry meets opposition leaders on Saturday but many senior figures were not on the list of expected participants, including Hamdeen Sabahy, who came a close third in presidential elections last year and former U.N. nuclear agency head Mohamed ElBaradei.

Kerry does not wish to be seen as lecturing Egyptians and will not explicitly tell opposition parties to renounce their boycott of the lower house polls, the U.S. official said.

However, he will make the case for them to take part.

"If they want to ensure that their views are taken account, the only way to do that is to participate. That they can't sit aside and just assume that somehow by magic that all of this is going to happen," the official said. "They've got to participate."

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CAIRO — The video outraged Egyptians, showing riot police strip and beat a middle-aged man and drag him across the pavement as they cracked down on protesters. The follow-up was even more startling: In his first comments afterward, the man insisted the police were just trying to help him.

Hamada Saber's initial account, given over the weekend as he lay in a police-run hospital, has raised accusations that police officials intimidated or bribed him in a clumsy attempt to cover up the incident, which was captured by Associated Press footage widely shown on Egyptian TV.

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"He was terrified. He was scared to speak," Saber's son Ahmed told The AP on Monday, explaining his father's account. Saber himself recanted his story on Sunday after his own family pushed him to tell the truth and acknowledged that the police beat him.

The incident has fueled an outcry that security forces, which were notorious for corruption, torture and abuse under Hosni Mubarak, have not changed in the nearly two years since his ouster. Activists now accuse Mubarak's Islamist successor, Mohammed Morsi, of cultivating the same culture of abuse as police crack down on his opponents.

The outcry was further heightened Monday by the apparent torture-death of an activist, who colleagues said was taken by police from a Tahrir Square protest on Jan. 27 and held at a Cairo security base known as Red Mountain. Mohammed el-Gindy's body showed marks of electrical shocks on his tongue, wire marks around his neck, smashed ribs, a broken skull and a brain hemorrhage, according to a medical report.

Blatant abuses by security forces under Mubarak were one factor that fueled the 2011 revolt against his rule. The highly public nature of the new cases put new pressure on Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, which was long repressed by security forces, to hold security officials responsible for any abuses.

Egypt's presidency said it is following up on the death of el-Gindy, adding that there will be "no return to violations of citizens' rights."

The Interior Ministry denied on Monday that el-Gindy was ever held by police. Morsi met Monday with top police officials, but the state newspaper Al-Ahram said his talks did not touch on the beating of Saber or el-Gindy's death. The paper said Morsi told officers he understands they operate under "extreme pressures" in the face of protests and that he would work for a political resolution to ease unrest.

Morsi's administration has said it is determined to stop what it calls violent protests that causing instability.

Morsi's prime minister, Hesham Kandil, indirectly warned the opposition and media not to raise public outcry against security officials. "This should not be used as a match to set fire to the nation ... to demolish the police," he said.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim warned that if police "collapse" Egypt will become "a militia state like some neighboring nations."

During Friday's clashes, Saber, a 48-year-old who works as a wall plasterer, was beaten.

Footage shows him writhing naked in the street. Black-clad riot police yank his pants around his ankles, kick him with their heavy black boots and lean over to hit him with batons. They drag him by the legs across the pavement and bundle him into a police van.

But in interviews with Egyptian television from a police hospital the next day, a smiling Saber said it was protesters who had shot him in the leg with birdshot, then stripped and beat him. He said the riot police were only trying to help him afterward.

He even blamed himself for any rough police treatment, saying that in his confusion he was resisting them.

"I was afraid ...  They were telling me: We swear to God we will not harm you, don't be afraid," Saber said, adding, "I was being very tiresome to the police."

His wife also praised the police, telling state TV, "they are giving him good treatment" at the police hospital.

But his children said he was forced to give the story.

"There are pressures on my mother to say that he is fine," his daughter Randa told independent Dream TV. "The government is the one pressing him."

In a statement, the Interior Ministry voiced its "regret" about the assault and vowed to investigate.

But Interior Minister Ibrahim echoed Saber's account and said initial investigation results showed it was protesters who stripped and beat Saber. He said riot police found Saber and tried to get him into the van — "though the way they did it was excessive."

'My whole body was smashed'
On Sunday, Saber told investigators that it was indeed police who beat and stripped him. Speaking to Al-Hayat TV, he said he gave his initial account because was afraid, then broke down in tears as he recounted begging the policemen for mercy.

"But no one gave me mercy," he wept. "My whole body was smashed." He has now been moved to a civilian hospital.

Rights activists say police intimidation of victims and their families to prevent complaints was rife under Mubarak and continues unabated. In a report last month, the Egyptian Initiative For Personal Rights documented 16 cases of police violence in which 11 people were killed and 10 tortured in police stations. Three died under torture during the first four months after Morsi took office on June 30, it said.

The rights group said officers increasingly act "like a gang taking revenge."

In one case it documented, police in the Nile Delta town of Meet Ghamr stormed a cafe and beat up patrons in September. When one woman who was beaten went to the police station to complain, the man accompanying her was arrested and tortured to death, the report said.

The sister of the slain man told AP that her brother's widow was paid the equivalent of around $25,000 to say that he was killed by a rock to his head during a protest.

"The main issue is that nothing has changed about the police. No change about accountability. There is just as much impunity as there was under Mubarak," said Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch. The past two years "we've seen an increase in the police's likelihood to use lethal force ...  in the context of regular policing activities."

In the case of el-Gindy, the activist who died Monday, fellow activists say he disappeared during the Jan. 27 Tahrir protest and they later learned from people who left the Red Mountain security camp that he was being held there. Soon after, el-Gindy was brought to a hospital in a coma and on Monday he died.

After his burial Monday in his hometown of Tanta in the Nile Delta, angry mourners marched on police headquarters and clashes erupted, with protesters throwing firebombs and stones and police firing back with tear gas.

CAIRO — A fire that broke out inside the grounds of the presidential palace in Egypt Friday was contained and put out, the head of Republican Guard said.

The fire was triggered by demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails and stones in clashes with riot police.

Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi issued a statement condemning the wave of violence that erupted outside the palace.

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The president also called on political forces to condemn the violence and withdraw all supporters from the areas surrounding the palace. Morsi said all relevant security agencies had been ordered to end the violence immediately and protect all state and public properties.

Opposition forces expressed their disapproval with protesters. It's unclear why the demonstrations turned hostile and violent.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood said it would "protect the legitimacy of the presidency," which is a veiled threat that the organization could deploy its members and supporters to the palace to confront anti-Morsi protesters.

Reuters reported that at least 15 petrol bombs were thrown over the wall of the palace grounds.

The Associated Press estimated the crowd outside the palace Friday numbered about 6,000.

The violence broke out for an eighth day as opponents of Islamist President Morsi held protests in cities across Egypt.

According to the AP, about 60 people have been killed in clashes over the past week.

There were also minor skirmishes Friday in the Tahrir Square area, home to the U.S. and U.K. embassies.

A few protesters were injured by riot police and they were taken to local hospitals.

Police also fired tear gas near the British embassy to keep protesters at bay. 

NBC News Staff Writer Ian Johnston, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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CAIRO — Egypt’s recent days of violence have focused attention on its political crisis — but the underlying cause remains an economy on the brink of collapse.

Rising prices of basic goods like bread, sugar and gasoline coupled with high rate of unemployment and a lack of social justice has created a lethal and combustible cocktail.

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Poor education, youth disenfranchisement, unemployment and poverty have created a reservoir of resentment between the young men leading the protests and the government.

Add to this mix a stagnant political reform process and the lack of confidence in basic government services, including justice, and you can understand the frustration among many Egyptians.

Every few months there is an explosion of violence. The flames are put out by promises of reform or sometimes sheer exhaustion on the part of the protesters but the spark — deep and serious socio-economic problems — remains and that's why we see a repeat.

On Wednesday, Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi was on a day trip to Germany despite the fragile security situation in his country.

Turbulent years
The urgency of his mission — to secure economic assistance and assure the international community that this crisis is resolvable — underlines the deeper problems fueling the country’s cyclical unrest.

The immediate trigger for this week's clashes was a convergence of emotion surrounding the second anniversary of the revolution and anger at the passing of a death sentence on 21 defendants on trial following a soccer stadium riot last year.

With each round of violence, the call for Mohamed Morsi to step down continues.  But most of the country just wants stability - with or without Morsi. Egypt has undergone two of the most turbulent years in its modern history.

The majority of Egyptians will tell you what they want is to feel physically and financially secure. The country is still a few years away from achieving that security.

There is a serious lack of leadership from either the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government or the so-called opposition, whose divisions and failure to connect with the demands of the street is making it increasingly irrelevant. The opposition carries no political clout, even if its grievances are legitimate.

Time and money
Morsi has several options to resolve this crisis. Most are short-term measures that could defuse some of the anger and mistrust that has built up between his regime and the opposition and the protesters.

Longer-term measures to ease social pressures, particularly among the country’s youth, will take time and money — including international investment.

Egyptians tried the ballot box, but have not yet seen the change they yearn for.  So they are turning to the street to express their dissatisfaction.

Until the government finds a way to absorb and deal with the root cause of people's issues, unrest will continue putting yet more strain on the fragile economy.

In short, this is a race against time in which Egypt, first under the rule of the military, and now under the Muslim Brotherhood, has already wasted two years.

Five people were shot dead in the Egyptian city of Suez during nationwide protests against President Mohamed Morsi on Friday, the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

One of the dead was a member of the security forces, medics said. Another 280 civilians and 55 security personnel were injured, officials said, in demonstrations fueled by anger at the president and his Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Thousands of opponents of Morsi massed in Cairo's Tahrir Square - the cradle of the revolt against Mubarak - to rekindle the demands of a revolution they say has been hijacked by Islamists who have betrayed its goals.

Street battles erupted in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Port Said. Arsonists attacked at least two state-owned buildings as symbols of government were targeted. An office used by the Muslim Brotherhood's political party was also torched.

The Jan. 25 anniversary laid bare the divide between the Islamists and their secular rivals.

This schism is hindering the efforts of Morsi, elected in June, to revive an economy in crisis and reverse a plunge in Egypt's currency by enticing back investors and tourists.

Inspired by the popular uprising in Tunisia, Egypt's revolution spurred further revolts across the Arab world. But the sense of common purpose that united Egyptians two years ago has given way to internal strife that had already triggered bloody street battles last month.

"Our revolution is continuing. We reject the domination of any party over this state. We say no to the Brotherhood state," Hamdeen Sabahy, a popular leftist leader, told Reuters.

PhotoBlog: Protesters fill Tahrir Square on anniversary of Egyptian revolution

The Brotherhood decided against mobilizing for the anniversary, wary of the scope for more conflict after December's violence, stoked by Morsi's decision to fast-track an Islamist-tinged constitution rejected by his opponents.

The Brotherhood denies accusations that it is seeking to dominate Egypt, labeling them a smear campaign by its rivals.

Death in Suez
There were conflicting accounts of the lethal shooting in Suez. Some witnesses said security forces had opened fire in response to gunfire from masked men.

News of the deaths capped a day of violence which started in the early hours. Before dawn in Cairo, police battled protesters who threw petrol bombs and firecrackers as they approached a wall blocking access to government buildings near Tahrir Square.

Clouds of tear gas filled the air. At one point, riot police used one of the incendiaries thrown at them to set ablaze at least two tents erected by youths, a Reuters witness said.

Skirmishes between stone-throwing youths and the police continued in streets around the square into the day. Ambulances ferried away a steady stream of casualties.

Protesters echoed the chants of 2011's historic 18-day uprising. "The people want to bring down the regime," they chanted. "Leave! Leave! Leave!" chanted others as they marched towards the square.

"We are not here to celebrate but to force those in power to submit to the will of the people. Egypt now must never be like Egypt during Mubarak's rule," said Mohamed Fahmy, an activist.

There were similar scenes in Suez and Alexandria, where protesters and riot police clashed near local government offices. Black smoke billowed from tires set ablaze by youths.

In Cairo, police fired tear gas to disperse a few dozen protesters trying to remove barbed-wire barriers protecting the presidential palace, witnesses said. A few masked men got as far as the gates before they were beaten back.

Tear gas was also fired at protesters who tried to remove metal barriers outside the state television building.

Outside Cairo, protesters broke into the offices of provincial governors in Ismailia and Kafr el-Sheikhin the Nile Delta. A local government building was torched in the Nile Delta city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra.

Badie calls for 'serious competition'
With an eye on parliamentary elections likely to begin in April, the Brotherhood marked the anniversary with a charity drive across the nation. It plans to deliver medical aid to one million people and distribute affordable basic foodstuffs.

Writing in Al-Ahram, Egypt's flagship state-run daily, Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badiesaid the country was in need of "practical, serious competition" to reform the corrupt state left by the Mubarak era.

"The differences of opinion and vision that Egypt is passing through is a characteristic at the core of transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and clearly expresses the variety of Egyptian culture," he wrote.

Morsi's opponents say he and his group are seeking to dominate the post-Mubarak order. They accuse him of showing some of the autocratic impulses of the deposed leader by, for example, driving through the new constitution last month.

"I am taking part in today's marches to reject the warped constitution, the 'Brotherhoodisation'of the state, the attack on the rule of law, and the disregard of the president and his government for the demands for social justice," Amr Hamzawy, a prominent liberal politician, wrote on his Twitter feed.

The Brotherhood says its rivals are failing to respect the rules of the new democracy that put the Islamists in the driving seat via free elections.

Six months into office, Morsi is also being held responsible for an economic crisis caused by two years of turmoil. The Egyptian pound has sunk to record lows against the dollar.

The parties that called for Friday's protests list demands including a complete overhaul of the constitution.

Critics say the constitution, which was approved in a referendum, offers inadequate protection for human rights, grants the president too many privileges and fails to curb the power of a military establishment supreme in the Mubarak era.

Morsi'ssupporters say enacting the constitution quickly was crucial to restoring stability needed for economic recovery. 

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