SANAA/ DUBAI: Yemen’s opposition met Wednesday to elect a “national council” aiming to take power from President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in Riyadh for 10 weeks recovering from serious injuries suffered in a bomb blast and has vowed to return to Yemen soon.
“The national council will lead the forces of the revolution, determined to stand strong until Ali Abdullah Saleh’s departure,” said a key opposition leader, Soltan al-Atwani.

The opposition hopes to unite the parties of the Common Forum, which includes the influential Islamist Al-Islah (reform) party, with the young protesters at the forefront of anti-regime protests since January.
The council would also include representatives of civil society, members of the secessionist Southern Movement and the northern Shiite Houthi rebels, as well as independent activists.

Tariq al-Shami, a spokesman of Saleh’s ruling General People’s Congress warned that “in forming this council, the opposition would sign the death certificate of the Gulf proposal” for a power transfer.
“With this, they prove they are not for a peaceful solution but are trying to overthrow the constitutional legitimacy,” he told AFP.

The deal proposed by the Gulf Cooperation Council in April stipulates that Saleh would submit his resignation to parliament 30 days after passing power to his vice president, in return for immunity from prosecution.
The opposition would then form a national unity government with the GPC equally represented, and presidential elections would follow two months later.

The president, who has been in office since 1978 and whose current term runs out in 2013, insists that the Gulf proposal should be implemented “in accordance with the constitution.”
The deal faltered in May after repeated delays by Saleh. In June, a bomb exploded at the president’s compound in Sanaa, and Saleh was flown to Saudi Arabia for treatment.

Leading opposition figure Mohammad Salem Bassandaoua said “our people are ready to make more sacrifices to impose their will, like the Tunisian and Egyptian people,” a reference to protesters who drove their longtime leaders from power earlier this year.
“There is no sufficient pressure on the regime,” said Bassandaoua, a former foreign minister.

The meeting was held in a hall at Sanaa University amid tight security provided by the army’s First Armoured Division and led by General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, who defected to the opposition in March.
The regime has threatened to shell the square outside the university where anti-Saleh protesters have camped since February if the council is formed, according to activists there.

Ahmar’s troops are deployed to protect the protesters, 200 of which have been killed nationwide in clashes with security forces and Saleh supporters since the end of January.
In a televised speech Tuesday, Saleh vowed to return home soon and mocked the parliamentary opposition as figures of “narrow interests” who had stolen the slogans of Yemen’s protesting youth in their lust for power.

“The announcement of his return is the announcement of sedition” in Yemen, replied Atwani, who accused Saleh of leading the deeply tribal country into “civil war” and criticized Riyadh for having allowed his speech.
Meanwhile, in the country’s lawless south, Yemeni tribesman working with the army of the president arrested 10 suspected Islamist militants Tuesday.

The men were stopped at a checkpoint near the town of Shoqra in the possession of machine guns and grenades heading toward the southern port city of Aden on the main coastal road. The men were handed over to the army, which transferred them to Aden by the safer sea route, local and tribal sources said.

Islamists, some possibly from Al-Qaeda, have taken over coastal areas and towns such as Jaar and Zinjibar in recent months, apparently exploiting a security vacuum as Saleh and his allies fight to stay in power in the face of pro-democracy protests that began in January.