SANAA – Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Friday a plan to negotiate his resignation in the face of mass protests was a “belligerent intervention”, apparently rejecting a Gulf Arab plan to end his 32-year rule.
Saleh, facing an unprecedented challenge from hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country, initially had accepted an offer by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to hold talks with the opposition.
But on Wednesday, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told reporters the GCC instead would strike a deal for Saleh to step down.
“We don’t get our legitimacy from Qatar or from anyone else…we reject this belligerent intervention,” Saleh told cheering supporters in the capital Sanaa.
Frustration with the impasse may push the thousands of Yemenis who have taken to the streets closer to violence. Some 21 people died in clashes this week in Taiz and the Red Sea port of Hudaida.
Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters marched through the streets of Taiz, south of Sanaa, in a funeral procession for protesters killed earlier this week — bloodshed that could trigger fresh clashes.
Even before the pro-democracy protests inspired by regional uprisings, Saleh was struggling to quell a separatist rebellion in the south and a Shi’ite insurgency in the north. A violent power struggle also could give al Qaeda’s Yemen-based regional wing more room to operate.
These factors spark concern for stability in a country that sits on a shipping lane through which more than three million barrels of oil pass each day.
The United States and Saudi Arabia, both of which have been the target of attempted attacks by al Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch, appear ready to push aside a long-time ally against al Qaeda to avoid a chaotic collapse of the poorest Arab state.
“Saleh’s options are gone. The Gulf initiative must have come as a shock from Saudi Arabia, which was his last ally,” Mohammed Sharqi, the leader of a youth protest movement in Sanaa, said, referring to the plan for Saleh to step down.
Washington froze its largest aid package for Yemen in February after protests began, the Wall Street Journal reported. “The first instalment of the aid package, worth a potential $1 billion or more over several years, was set to be rolled out in February, marking the White House’s largest bid at securing President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s allegiance in its battle against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” it said.
Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the paper said the proposed package included up to $200 million in counter-terrorism support this fiscal year, up from $155 million in fiscal 2010, as well as a nearly equal amount for development aid.
The Washington Post said a Yemeni opposition party leader had told a U.S. embassy official in Sanaa about a secret plan to oust Saleh less than two years ago.
Several previously undisclosed U.S. diplomatic cables provided by the website WikiLeaks revealed that U.S. officials were aware of Yemen’s political state but largely discounted the prospect that Saleh could be forced out, it said.
