CAIRO  Hundreds of people across Egypt’s political spectrum greeted the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei on his arrival at the airport here on Friday and called on him to run for president, a daring political gesture in a country where unauthorized political demonstrations are illegal.

Dr. ElBaradei’s plane landed several hours late, at 6 p.m., in his first return to Egypt since leaving his post at the end of last year as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Though opposition politics in Egypt are constrained by laws that restrict freedom of speech and the right to assemble, a grass-roots effort has emerged to try to draft Dr. ElBaradei to run in the presidential election in 2011.

The broad nature of Dr. ElBaradei’s appeal  as an outsider of international renown with no ties to a political system widely seen as ineffective and corrupt  was on display at the airport. Those who gathered  men and women  included people from various regions who said they had never been involved in politics, prominent actors and writers, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and leading members of groups calling for democratic change.

Image Hundreds of supporters of Mohamed ElBaradei gathered at the airport in Cairo on Friday to await his return to Egypt. Credit... Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

“We are supporting him and he is a symbol of change,” said Muhammad Abdel Qudous, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned but tolerated Islamic movement. “The question is, can ElBaradei, who lived most of his life working in Europe, can he lead a new Egyptian revolution for change?”