SANAA: Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, being treated for shrapnel wounds in Riyadh, will not return home, a top Saudi official told AFP Friday, contrary to Sanaa’s claims that he will return soon.
The conflicting reports emerged as hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters demonstrated Friday across Yemeni cities demanding the quick installation of an interim ruling council to replace Saleh.
A counter-demonstration by regime loyalists in Sanaa was poorly attended for the first time since they began in late January, witnesses said.
A Saudi official claimed Friday that Saleh, who is hospitalized in Riyadh after being wounded in an explosion at his Sanaa compound in early June, will not return to Yemen.

“The Yemeni president will not return to Yemen,” the official said, requesting anonymity.
“It has not been decided where he will stay,” the official added, apparently suggesting that Saleh might eventually leave Saudi Arabia for another country.
The official did not specify whether the decision not to return home was taken by Saleh himself.
The statement was promptly denied by Yemen’s deputy information minister Abdo al-Janadi, who said that Saleh “will return in the coming few days.”

Anti-Saleh demonstrators in Sanaa urged Saudi King Abdullah not to allow Saleh to return to Yemen.
“Oh King Abdullah, keep Ali Abdullah [Saleh],” they chanted at University Square, now dubbed Change Square, host to nearly five months of protests.
Demonstrations were also staged in Taiz, Yemen’s second-largest city, Aden, Ebb, Hudayda, Mukalla and other cities, witnesses said.

In Taiz, protesters held Friday prayers and a following demonstration at Freedom Square for the first time since the place was stormed by security forces on May 29 in an attack that the U.N. said left more than 50 dead.
Protesters are pressing Saleh’s deputy, Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi to form a transitional ruling council to prevent the return of Saleh, who has not been seen in public since the bomb attack on his compound on June 3.
The veteran leader was flown to Riyadh on June 4 on board a Saudi medical aircraft, a day after he was wounded in a bomb explosion at a mosque inside his Sanaa presidential compound.

Reports on the condition of Saleh’s health have been sketchy, but Bahrain’s King Hamad was reported to have called him Thursday, two days after Saudi King Abdullah had a phone conversation with him.
In Saleh’s absence, his deputy Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has been coming under intensive local and international pressure to heed the demands of protesters to set up an interim ruling council, which would prevent Saleh returning to power.

On Wednesday, Hadi met representatives of youth protests which have raged since late January demanding the ouster of Saleh. They pressed him to give a clear stance on their demands, and gave him two weeks to respond.
The meeting followed talks between Hadi and the parliamentary opposition in which they agreed on calming the situation as a first step toward reviving the political process.
On Thursday Washington welcomed Hadi’s talks with opponents of Saleh, who was a key U.S.-ally in the war on Al-Qaeda.

“We have been encouraged that Vice President Hadi has started some outreach to the opposition and started some dialogue,” said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
“Because, as you know, we believe that there is no time to lose in moving on to the democratic future that Yemen deserves,” she added.

Protesters had Monday given Hadi 24 hours to declare his position on calls for him to join the proposed council which would lead the country for a maximum of nine months. The activists said the council would “appoint a nationalist and compatible figure to form a government of technocrats.”