As the streets of Cairo erupted in celebration, leaders and officials around the world greeted the departure of President Hosni Mubarak on Friday with full-throated expressions of support for the people of Egypt along with some measured words of caution ahead for an uncertain period of political transition, The New York Times reports.

Across a region that has seen online social networks lead to real-world social upheaval, many officials released their first statements via Twitter.

“Egypt takes the Arab world into a new era. Let’s make it a better one,” Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, wrote on the social networking site. With protests planned for next week in Bahrain, the kingdom also said on Friday it would give cash payments equal to $2,650 to every family, Reuters reported.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, sounded somewhat of a cautious note after congratulating the Egyptian people on the success of nearly three weeks of protests demanding that Mr. Mubarak step down. “Egypt is a strong state and the continuity of the Egyptian institutions is of crucial importance,” he wrote.

But regional leaders who had feared change in Egypt — a group including other Middle East autocrats — made few public statements on Friday. The Israeli government, which has counted on Egypt as one of its few allies in the Arab world, had not issued a formal statement by evening. By contrast, Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, celebrated the news and called on the new government in Egypt to open its border with the territory.

Read the entire story at nytimes.com