Monday, March 28, 2011

SANAA: Talks to end a standoff over Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s rule have stopped without a plan to resume, opposition figures said Sunday, as clashes erupted between the army and militants in the south.
Saleh vowed there would be no more concessions to the opposition, who are demanding he step down.
But in a sign that the political back-and-forth on a transfer of power may not be completely dead, the ruling party’s governing committee recommended forming a new government to draft a new constitution on the basis of a parliamentary system.

“Yesterday evening they stopped,” an aide to Gen. Ali Mohsen, who has sided with protesters demanding Saleh’s ouster, said of the talks. Asked if he anticipated talks would resume, he said: “Until now, absolutely not.”
A spokesman for Yemen’s main opposition coalition also said the talks had been halted, a development that if it continues would likely raise fears that violence between rival military units could replace the political process.
There was no immediate comment from Sanaa.

Saleh convened a meeting of the governing committee of his General People’s Congress party Sunday for a briefing on the status of the dialogue. At the meeting, members pleaded with Saleh to stay in power until 2013, when his term expires, a party source said.

Saleh has said he was prepared for a dignified departure but that opposition parties were hijacking the protests to demand he quit without organizing a democratic handover.

“I could leave power … even in a few hours, on condition of maintaining respect and prestige,” Saleh told Al-Arabiya television. “I have to take the country to safe shores … I’m holding on to power in order to hand it over peaceably.”

But during the interview he seemed to suggest he would stay at least for the short term, sprinkling the interview with warnings that Yemen would slide into civil war and fragment along regional and tribal lines if he left power immediately.

Later, he complained he had already offered many concessions but that the demands of the opposition were never-ending. “We didn’t give concessions for the sake of concessions. But to have Yemen avoid the consequences of war. From now, we will not offer more concessions,” he told the ruling party.

In continued unrest, angry protesters set fire to a bank office in the eastern port of Mukalla after security forces attacked a funeral procession held for a man killed in earlier protests and wounded three marchers, residents said.
Militants clashed with the Yemeni Army in a southern town. The army tried to dislodge a coalition of Islamists from Jaar, Abyan Province, after they seized buildings Saturday and security forces appeared to have deserted the town of several hundred thousand. One soldier was killed Sunday and jets flew over the town.

But residents said militants appeared to have taken control and the army was withdrawing to Abyan’s provincial capital, Zinjibar, where witnesses said security measures had been tightened after militants fired rockets at state buildings.
Five soldiers were killed Saturday in an ambush in Lowdar, also in Abyan, which officials blamed on Al-Qaeda. – Reuters