SANAA: Yemen’s opposition rejected an offer Thursday to join Gulf-mediated talks in Saudi Arabia on a transfer of power and set a two-week deadline for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step aside.
Gulf Arab foreign ministers had said they would invite Saleh, who has faced two months of street protests demanding his resignation, and his opponents to mediation talks on a transfer of power.

However, the opposition has seesawed on the offer.
“We have renewed our emphasis on the need for speeding the process of [Saleh] standing down to within two weeks. Therefore we will not go to Riyadh,” said Mohammad al-Mutawakkil, a top opposition leader.

Yemen’s opposition first rejected a Gulf Cooperation Council statement on the framework for the talks, which had been due to take place in Riyadh, because it appeared to offer Saleh a waiver from future prosecution and did not call for an immediate handover.

Later, they met the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait Tuesday seeking clarification of the GCC understanding of a “transfer of power,” which does not specify a time frame for Saleh to step down.
Some opposition leaders had hinted that talks could start as early as Saturday, before Mutawakkil said the clarifications offered by Gulf ambassadors had been inadequate.

“We didn’t find in the clarifications that the ambassadors presented anything that meets our demands for an immediate removal,” Mutawakkil said. “There was nothing new from the GCC ambassadors.”

Saleh has accepted the talks framework, while another key player, General Ali Mohsen, a kinsman of Saleh’s whose units are protecting protesters in Sanaa, has welcomed the GCC plan.
A transfer of power in Yemen could technically last until the next presidential polls scheduled for 2013, a prospect the opposition finds unacceptable.

Meanwhile, Yemenis are preparing for rival protests following the weekly Friday prayers after anti-regime protesters rejected any solution that does not see Saleh out of office.
Anti-Saleh protesters are calling for the “Friday of Determination” while his loyalists have dubbed it a “Friday of Dialogue.”

Massive rival demonstrations have been taking place every Friday for months in the poverty-stricken country, a declared U.S. ally in Washington’s war on Al-Qaeda, which enjoys strong presence in Yemen’s south and east.
The weekly protests have turned deadly at times.

In a Friday bloodbath on March 18, 52 people were gunned down in what rights groups have called “an apparently coordinated sniper attack on a protest camp in Sanaa.”