ADEN/SANAA: Leading members of Yemen’s ruling party delayed Tuesday an anticipated vote to approve a modified Gulf-brokered power transition plan which aims to pull the impoverished country out of its bloody political deadlock.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is still in Saudi Arabia for treatment after a bomb attack, has faced the biggest challenge to his 33-year rule as a mass pro-democracy movement drags into its seventh month.

“There is a great danger of further agitation,” said Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, vice president and acting leader in Saleh’s absence, according to state news agency Saba. Hadi said the party meeting would continue Wednesday.
The U.S. and neighboring oil giant Saudi Arabia, wary of rising turmoil that could give more room for Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing to operate, have pushed for Saleh to accept a power transfer plan by the Gulf Cooperation Council. He has backed out of inking the deal on three separate occasions.
After members of his party pushed for the plan’s time frame to be modified, opposition delegates, a U.N. delegate and Hadi agreed to modify the deal.

The new “operational mechanism” for the Gulf plan requires Saleh to transfer his powers to the vice president after signing the deal but gives him three months to formally step down, as opposed to 30 days, at which point there will be elections and the opposition will form a unity government.

The interim government, which will govern a two-year transition period, would retain Hadi as interim president. The government would use the time to prepare a new constitution and hold a dialogue with insurgent groups.
Currently Saleh’s family has a strong hold on leadership of the armed forces. His son Ahmed Ali Saleh, who the opposition worries is being groomed to inherit the presidency, heads the elite Republican Guard.

Saleh gave the green light for his party to accept the modifications to the Gulf plan in a speech last month. But one of the participants Tuesday told Reuters that Saleh’s General People’s Congress party was still divided over the modifications.

Meanwhile, battles between the Yemeni army and Islamist militants killed 19 people in the country’s south Tuesday, as the military struggles to regain control of areas seized by fighters suspected of links to Al-Qaeda.

Six soldiers and 13 militants were killed in clashes in a western suburb of Zinjibar Tuesday, a military official said. Three soldiers and an unknown number of militants were wounded, he added. Also Monday night, clashes erupted in the northern city of Taiz between troops and tribesmen siding with anti-Saleh protesters, tribal sources said Tuesday, adding no casualties were reported.