Yemen political reform deal off

Agreement with opposition to end months of protests looks in tatters as Ali Abdullah Saleh postpones signing ceremony A deal to end three months of anti-government protests in Yemen appears to be on the brink of collapse after the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, refused to sign it, plunging the Arab state into further turmoil. The pact, brokered by the Gulf Co-operation Council , would have made Saleh, who has been in power for 33 years, the third ruler to be thrown out in the Arab spring. Yemen’s political opposition, furious over the last-minute change of heart, said it may now step up pressure on the international community to intervene. “We are studying the options of escalations and waiting for a US-European stance on Saleh’s refusal to sign,” a senior opposition leader told Reuters. A Gulf source said the opposition’s formal signing ceremony in Riyadh on Sunday would now not take place after Saleh’s own ceremony on Saturday was postponed. The source did not say whether or when it might be rescheduled. Arab foreign ministers were due to discuss the crisis in Riyadh, but Yemen’s opposition said it would now not join the talks, saying there was no reason to attend. Gulf Co-operation Council mediators told Yemen’s opposition Saleh would sign the deal – but only as leader of his party, and not in his capacity as president. The GCC secretary-general, who was in Sanaa for the signing, left Yemen without securing Saleh’s signature. A deal, if it is brought back on the table, would see Saleh appoint a prime minister from the opposition to head a transitional government, which would set a presidential vote for 60 days after he leaves. It would also grant immunity from prosecution to Saleh, his family and aides. Yemen’s opposition said it still hoped Gulf states would extract Saleh’s signature through negotiation, since both Saleh and the opposition, which includes Islamists and leftists, had agreed the deal in principle. “The matter is now with the Gulf states. If they are able to persuade Saleh, that would be good,” Mohammed Basindwa, an opposition figure tipped as a possible interim prime minister, said late on Saturday. The US and neighbouring Saudi Arabia want the Yemen standoff resolved to avert chaos that could make a Yemeni wing of al-Qaida a greater threat to the region. Protesters say they will stay on the streets until Saleh leaves. They also called for him to be put on trial for corruption and the deaths of an estimated 144 protesters. In further violence, gunmen launched attacks with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire on Sunday against a government building in the southern province of Abyan, killing three soldiers guarding the site and wounding four others, according to a local official who blamed the attack on al-Qaida. Yemen Middle East Protest guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 1, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.