Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh will respond “positively” to an opposition roadmap for him to step down from power and institute reforms, a senior aide said yesterday, as anti-Saleh protests continued across the country.
Yemen’s coalition of opposition parties, joined by some tribal and religious leaders, proposed a five-point plan this week to Saleh, who has ruled the Arabian Peninsula state for 32 years.
Leaders of the opposition coalition say their plan would pave the way for Saleh to step down by the end of this year, though youths and activists have said they are skeptical of the plan and are demanding Saleh’s immediate resignation.
“There will be a positive response to the proposal,” a senior official told reporters. “The details are being discussed by the two sides right now and we’ll announce a final position at a later time.”
The official did not specify when.
However, Saleh was unable to persuade opponents that his previous offer to step down in 2013 was anything more than a maneuver to ward off unrest, galvanized by successful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
“This is clearly a way of getting around the youth revolution. The protesters will not accept anything other than the departure of this regime immediately and with no delays,” said Samia al-Aghbari, a leading Sana’a activist.
The opposition’s plan includes changing the Constitution, rewriting election laws to ensure fair representation in parliament, removing Saleh’s relatives from leadership positions in the army and security forces and guaranteeing the right to peaceful protest.
“We shouldn’t read too much into a so-called positive response,” said Shadi Hamid, of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. “The strategy now is to stall ... and hold on as long as possible and hope protesters lose steam. I don’t think we should be under the illusion Saleh will become a democrat overnight.”
CROSS-STRAIT COLLABORATION: The new KMT chairwoman expressed interest in meeting the Chinese president from the start, but she’ll have to pay to get in Beijing allegedly agreed to let Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) around the Lunar New Year holiday next year on three conditions, including that the KMT block Taiwan’s arms purchases, a source said yesterday. Cheng has expressed interest in meeting Xi since she won the KMT’s chairmanship election in October. A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a consensus on a meeting was allegedly reached after two KMT vice chairmen visited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao (宋濤) in China last month. Beijing allegedly gave the KMT three conditions it had to
‘BALANCE OF POWER’: Hegseth said that the US did not want to ‘strangle’ China, but to ensure that none of Washington’s allies would be vulnerable to military aggression Washington has no intention of changing the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Saturday, adding that one of the US military’s main priorities is to deter China “through strength, not through confrontation.” Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Hegseth outlined the US Department of Defense’s priorities under US President Donald Trump. “First, defending the US homeland and our hemisphere. Second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation. Third, increased burden sharing for us, allies and partners. And fourth, supercharging the US defense industrial base,” he said. US-China relations under
The Chien Feng IV (勁蜂, Mighty Hornet) loitering munition is on track to enter flight tests next month in connection with potential adoption by Taiwanese and US armed forces, a government source said yesterday. The kamikaze drone, which boasts a range of 1,000km, debuted at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September, the official said on condition of anonymity. The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology and US-based Kratos Defense jointly developed the platform by leveraging the engine and airframe of the latter’s MQM-178 Firejet target drone, they said. The uncrewed aerial vehicle is designed to utilize an artificial intelligence computer
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday decided to shelve proposed legislation that would give elected officials full control over their stipends, saying it would wait for a consensus to be reached before acting. KMT Legislator Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍) last week proposed amendments to the Organic Act of the Legislative Yuan (立法院組織法) and the Regulations on Allowances for Elected Representatives and Subsidies for Village Chiefs (地方民意代表費用支給及村里長事務補助費補助條例), which would give legislators and councilors the freedom to use their allowances without providing invoices for reimbursement. The proposal immediately drew criticism, amid reports that several legislators face possible charges of embezzling fees intended to pay
RSS