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| Yemenis stage rallies, demand president step down |
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 SANAA (AP) — Hundreds of thousands have poured onto the streets of major cities and towns across Yemen, demanding the country's embattled president step down.Defying the scorching summer weather and the dawn-to-dusk fasting hours during the holy month of Ramadan, the crowds are waving Yemeni flags and chanting slogans against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. One of the protesters, Gamal Gaber, says no one is leaving the rally "until we topple Saleh and all his regime members." Meanwhile, thousands of Saleh loyalists gathered for Friday prayers in a mosque near the presidential palace in the capital Sanaa. Saleh, who is recuperating in Saudi Arabia after a June assassination attempt, has clung to power despite six months of mass protests. The embattled president is now objecting to key points of a U.S.-backed deal that calls for him to step down in return for immunity from prosecution, a member of his ruling party said Thursday. The official said Saleh spoke during a meeting with his top party officials in the Saudi capital Riyadh, where he is recuperating from severe burns and other wounds sustained in a June attack on his compound in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. The remarks reflect yet another stalling maneuver by Saleh, who has clung to power in the face of nearly six months of street protests demanding his ouster and a deteriorating economic and security situation in Yemen. Yemen's uprising was inspired by the revolts that swept across other parts of the Arab world this year. The protests have often turned violent, with Saleh's security forces using deadly force against the protesters. Saleh was rushed to Saudi Arabia in June for emergency medical treatment. Since he left, the country has been in limbo, with both the protesters demands and the question of who will succeed Saleh unresolved. The power transfer deal, proposed by a Saudi-led group of Arab Persian Gulf nations, envisages Saleh stepping down and handing power to his deputy, who would rule during until presidential and parliamentary elections take place. The Yemeni official who attended Thursday's meeting told The Associated Press from Riyadh that Saleh is now demanding that the deal spell out the “mechanism of implementation” of the power transfer. “This doesn't means rejecting the initiative,” the official quoted Saleh as saying. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the media. It remained unclear what Saleh meant by “mechanism of implementation.” The Yemeni opposition accuses Saleh of being deliberately vague and trying to buy more time while the country sinks into more uncertainty and chaos. Mohammed el-Sabri, an opposition spokesman, denounced Saleh's remarks as “a new game to get around the deal.” “He doesn't want this deal in the first place but he doesn't have the courage to say that he rejects it in the face of the Americans and the Saudis,” el-Sabri said. The United States has called on Saleh to step down before negotiating an exist for himself.   Socialize this Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay in touch and receive all of TT updates right in your feed reader
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