Mr. Mubarak’s appointment on Saturday of a vice president, she said, was only the “bare beginning” of a process that must include a national dialogue with the protesters and “free, fair and credible” elections, scheduled for September. She described the elections for a “next president” as an “action-enforcing event that is already on the calendar.”

“We have been very clear that we want to see a transition to democracy,” Mrs. Clinton said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And we want to see the kind of steps taken to bring that about. We want to see an orderly transition.”

She noted that for nearly three decades the United States had been imploring Mr. Mubarak to appoint a vice president. She offered no endorsement of the man he named, Omar Suleiman, the chief of Egyptian intelligence, whom she has met several times in Cairo and Washington.

“There are some new people taking responsibility,” Mrs. Clinton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We hope they can contribute to the kind of economic and democratic reforms that the people of Egypt deserve.”

The administration’s caution is drawing criticism from some in Egypt, including Dr. ElBaradei. Speaking on “Face the Nation,” he said, “The American government cannot ask the Egyptian people to believe that a dictator who has been in power for 30 years will be the one to implement democracy.”

The White House has refrained from calling publicly for Mr. Mubarak to step down, officials have said, because it worries about losing leverage and contributing to a political vacuum in Egypt, which could be filled by extremist, anti-American forces.

Indeed, Mrs. Clinton reaffirmed the ties between the United States and Egypt. She said the army appeared to be acting with restraint, differentiating between peaceful protesters and looters. But she warned Egypt not to make changes that resulted in a democracy for “six months or a year, evolving into a military dictatorship.”