CAIRO - Around 300 people demonstrated in Cairo on Sunday against the possibility that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may run for a fifth term, denouncing what they called an "hereditary presidency".

Under the glare of several hundred helmeted anti-riot police armed with truncheons, protestors held up banners scrawled with: "no to hereditary power" "no to a fifth mandate" and "no to Mubarak, his party and his son".

Several dozen demonstrators taped their mouths over with the word "enough" as they gathered outside Cairo's main court building.

The event was organised by a reformist group dominated by the illegal but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood.

Mubarak, in power for 23 years, has given no official word on whether he will seek a fifth mandate at elections due next September or October, but parliament has passed a motion in support of his candidacy.

Observers have suggested the ruling National Democratic Party is grooming Mubarak's son Gamal to take over from his father after a fifth mandate.

Protestors also called for the release of relatives of those accused of October's bombing of a Sinai hotel and denounced the release last week of a convicted Israeli Druze spy in exchange for six Egyptian students held in Israel.

One of the organisers, Mohammed Abdel Qoddus from the Muslim Brotherhood, said the demonstration would be followed by other gatherings within weeks.

In a pamphlet handed out at the demonstration, organisers attributed "an alarming decline in (Egypt's) national and regional role" to "personal rule".