Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Friday he wants early presidential polls, as his party and the opposition insisted a Gulf plan seeing him out in 30 days will be signed as planned.
“We call for an early presidential election in a democratic way, in order to avoid bloodshed,” Saleh told thousands of rallying supporters, after about four months of deadly protests demanding his departure after 33 years in office.
He spoke a day after officials from his ruling party and the opposition said a Gulf-brokered deal that would see him leave office within the following 30 days was to be inked today.
Saleh said his people would remain steadfast against the “coup movement,” in reference to the protests.
The statement appears to be a new maneuver by the president, who is facing mounting pressure from Gulf neighbors and allies in the US to fulfill his commitment to step down.
According to a proposal by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saleh would hand power to the vice president 30 days after an agreement is signed and he and his aides would be granted immunity from prosecution by parliament.
A national unity government led by a prime minister from the opposition would be formed and a presidential election would follow 60 days after his departure.
Saleh has repeatedly avoided committing himself to the deal and the opposition has accused him of putting up hurdles to escape an early exit from office.
“The president is uttering conflicting messages that are meaningless,” said Mohammed al-Qahtan, the spokesman of the parliamentary Common Forum opposition following his speech.
However, “I am confident that the signing will take place on the set date,” he said, adding that Saleh himself “will sign.”
The head of the information office of Saleh’s ruling General People’s Congress, Tareq al-Shami, also confirmed that Saleh “will sign” the Gulf-brokered deal.
“The GPC has already chosen its candidates for the posts of the president and the vice president,” he said, affirming the party’s -decision to go ahead with the Gulf-proposed agreement.
Foreign ministers of the GCC are scheduled to meet in the Saudi capital today to discuss the situation in Yemen, a GCC statement said on Thursday, without mentioning the signing of the agreement.
Meanwhile, Saleh on Friday headed a meeting of the council of national defense in the presence of his son and nephews who lead top security bodies.
“The council hailed the positive and responsible response to the [Gulf] initiative, reflecting the president’s keenness to spare the country slipping into unrest,” state news agency Saba reported.
As Saleh addressed his supporters, hundreds of thousands of his opponents gathered in Sana’a’s al-Siteen street reiterating their demand for his immediate departure.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators also turned out to protest against Saleh in several southern cities, witnesses said.
They chanted slogans including “we call on the countries of the Gulf to stand with the revolution of the people,” an apparent reference to the GCC initiative.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema