By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Monday, February 14, 2011

SANAA: Anti-government protesters clashed with police blocking them from marching to Yemen’s presidential palace in Sanaa Sunday, witnesses said.

The clashes occurred while President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the main opposition group were preparing for talks that the government hoped would help avert an Egyptian-style revolt in the Arabian Peninsula state.
Saleh decided to postpone a visit to the United States planned for later this month “due to the current circumstances in the region,” the state news agency Saba said without elaborating.

About 1,000 people attended the demonstration shouting “the Yemeni people want the fall of the regime” and “a Yemeni revolution after the Egyptian revolution,” before dozens broke off to march to the palace.
In the harshest response yet to a wave of protests in the capital, police prevented the smaller group from reaching the palace, hitting them with batons, while protesters threw rocks at the police, witnesses said. Four people were injured.

Opposition officials said 10 protesters were briefly detained in Sanaa Sunday and 120 more were taken into custody overnight in the city of Taiz after protests Saturday.

In the south, some 1,500 anti-government protesters marched in Aden and hundreds demonstrated in two of the port city’s suburbs. Police also used batons to disperse the marchers, arresting about eight people, residents said.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch criticized Yemen for allowing government supporters to assault, intimidate and sometimes clash with protesters calling on Saleh to quit. The Yemeni opposition agreed Sunday to resume talks suspended since October with the government of President Saleh.

The Common Forum, an alliance of parliamentary opposition groups, is “ready to sign a framework agreement this week … on [resuming] the national dialogue,” it said, in a statement received by AFP. It said the draft deal calls for the formation of a unity government and the inclusion in dialogue of the secessionist Southern Movement, the Shiite rebels of northern Yemen and opposition members in exile.

Talks would resume from the point at which they were suspended on Oct. 31, said the Common Forum, grouping Al-Islah (Reform), which is Yemen’s main Islamist opposition, the Yemeni Socialist Party and other smaller factions.
“We urge the authorities to learn a lesson from what happened in Tunisia and Egypt,” it said. – Reuters, AFP