Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh rejected an opposition plan for him to step aside this year, as protests against his three-decade rule over the impoverished nation swelled into hundreds of thousands.
The opposition said Saleh, a US ally against al-Qaeda, was sticking to an earlier plan to step down only when his current term ends in 2013, but had agreed to a proposal by religious leaders to revamp elections, parliament and the judicial system.
“The president rejected the proposal and is holding on to his previous offer,” said the opposition’s rotating president Mohammed al-Mutawakil.
A spokesman for the president’s ruling party, Tarek al-Shami, said Saleh had approved of the opposition plan, but wanted it to be modified so he could complete his term. “He would accept the opposition’s plan, including the article about a smooth transition of power, but it needs to be implemented at the end of the president’s term in 2013.”
Yemen, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia, was teetering on the brink of failed statehood even before recent protests, with Saleh struggling to cement a truce with Shiite rebels in the north and quell a budding secessionist rebellion in the south.
“Oh God, God please get rid of Ali Abdullah,” demonstrators chanted in the capital Sana’a, where protests stretched back for more than 2 km in the streets around Sana’a University.
Political analysts say growing protests, inspired by unrest that has toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia, may be reaching a point where it will be difficult even for Saleh, a clever political survivalist, to cling to power.
In the north, Shiite Muslim rebels accused the Yemeni army of firing rockets on a protest in Harf Sufyan, where thousands had gathered. Two people were killed and 13 injured.
“During a peaceful protest this Friday morning ... demanding the fall of the regime, an end to corruption and political change, a military post fired rockets at a group of protesters and hit dozens of people,” a rebel statement said.
The government said men had fired on a military post in Harf Sufyan, wounding four soldiers, but denied firing on protesters.
Clerics sympathetic to the opposition, whose ranks have grown with the defection of Saleh allies, joined protesters in Sana’a for Friday prayers and called on Yemenis to take to the streets to demand Saleh step down.
In another political blow to Saleh, Ali Ahmad al-Omrani, an influential ally, resigned in front of tens of thousands of protesters rallying at Sana’a University on Friday.
Omrani, a tribal sheikh from the southern al-Baida Province, is the tenth parliament member to defect from the 68-year-old leader’s ruling party since last week.
Possibly more than 100,000 protested earlier on Friday in one of the largest demonstrations in the capital yet, and similar numbers rallied in Taiz, south of Sana’a.
More than 20,000 protesters marched in Aden, some carrying black flags of mourning for three protesters killed in the city last week. Tens of thousands more marched in Ibb, south of Sana’a.
Opposition leaders said more than 500,000 people were protesting in Sana’a and Taiz, but that could not be verified.
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