By Tarek Amara and Andrew Hammond
TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian politicians are negotiating the creation of a council to replace or oversee the interim government, several sources said on Monday after days of street protests demanding that the cabinet resign.
The sources said the council would be tasked with protecting the revolution that toppled veteran president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali this month, amid widespread complaints that former members of the ruling party are trying to cling on to power.
The council is expected to include respected opposition politician Ahmed Mestiri, whom a range of opposition politicians and former members of the ruling RCD believe they can work with.
The news came as the Tunisian army general who refused to support Ben Ali's crackdown on protesters warned that a political vacuum could bring back dictatorship.
"Our revolution is your revolution. The revolution of the youth could be lost and could be exploited by those who call for a vacuum," General Rashid Ammar told crowds outside the prime minister's office, where protesters have demanded that Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi quit.
"The army will protect the revolution," he said.
Ammar's decision to withdraw support from Ben Ali is widely seen as a turning point that eventually forced him to leave the country on Jan 14 after weeks of popular protests.
In Washington, the State Department said it had sent its top diplomat for the Middle East to Tunisia for talks on the political crisis.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley said Assistant Secretary of State Jeff Feltman had arrived in Tunis "to confer with the interim government on its plans for democratic reforms and elections."
The Tunisians' revolt has electrified millions across the Arab world who suffer similarly from unemployment, rising prices and corrupt rule, often by leaders backed by Western powers as a bulwark against radical Islam
Sihem Bensedrine, prominent rights activist and head of the non-governmental National Council for Liberties, said an announcement on the new council could come any day.
"We are negotiating with the transitional government. We had contacts with some ministers in the new government and head of the committee for political reform," she said, referring to a committee created by the government to revise Tunisia's laws to allow free elections and prevent the rise of a new strongman.
"The idea is to create a kind of council for safeguarding the revolution."
Bensedrine said Ben Ali's rubber-stamp parliament would be dissolved under the new plan, and the council would be given the power to supervise the interim government, which could retain Ghannouchi as prime minister.
The council would issue an electoral code and hold elections for a basic parliament that would rewrite the constitution. It would include Tunisia's powerful labor union, the bar association, civil society groups and political parties including Ennahda, the country's largest Islamist group, which was banned under Ben Ali.
"This will appease the anger of the public, it's a solution to get out of this crisis and a way to establish people's confidence," she said.
Larbi Sadiki, politics professor at Exeter University in England, said he had been privy to the discussions and that veteran politicians from the era of Tunisian independence leader Habib Bourguiba were involved behind the scenes.
One of them is Mestiri, who broke with Bourguiba in the 1960s over lack of democracy and set up his own political party.
"Mestiri is definitely a really positive element. He stood against Bourguiba and set up his own party," Sadiki said, describing him as a consensual figure acceptable to both secularists and Islamists.
A cabinet reshuffle is also expected within the next few days to fill ministries vacated by a slew of resignations, though this could include changes to other portfolios, Education Minister Tayeb Baccouche said.
"As part of the consultations, there is expected to be a reshuffle in the coming days," he told Reuters.
Five ministers have resigned since the interim cabinet was announced last week, including three representatives of the powerful labor union and one opposition leader.
Earlier, police fired teargas canisters to disperse protesters in Tunis. The protesters, mostly from marginalized rural areas who had camped out overnight at the prime minister's office, broke windows at the nearby finance ministry building.
"Are they afraid the government will really be shaken? It seems that Ben Ali's regime is back," said demonstrator Kamal Ashour.
Police put under house arrest Abdelwahhab Abdalla, the Ben Ali political adviser in charge of monitoring the media, state television said. The interim government said last week 33 members of Ben Ali's family had been arrested. On Sunday, police arrested two confidants of Ben Ali.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France, the former colonial power, would offer emergency aid to Tunisia as it grapples with a transition to a new government. He acknowledged criticism of Paris's past support for Ben Ali.
"There was a desperation, a suffering, a feeling of suffocation which, we have to admit, we did not properly assess," he said at a Paris news conference.
Sarkozy said France would hunt down wealth plundered during Ben Ali's time in power and return it to Tunisians, and the Paris prosecutor said later it had opened a preliminary investigation into his French assets.
(Additional reporting by Ashraf Fahim and Lin Noueihed in Tunis and Catherine Bremer and Yann Le Guernigou in Paris; writing by Giles Elgood; editing by Mark Trevelyan)
