Yemen transition could be agreed "in 10-15 days"

September 18, 2011

A new government deal is expected in 15 days even though Yemen looks far from ready for presidential elections. With many disagreements over transferring power, could things really happen so fast?

A deal to ease Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh from power could be ready for signing with opposition parties within 15 days, a senior ruling party official said on Saturday.

Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC) and the opposition coalition, the Joint Meetings Parties (JMP), have been wrangling for months over a Gulf-brokered transition plan, even as Yemeni protesters demand the president steps down immediately.

Despite widespread scepticism that any deal is within reach, Sultan al-Barakani, deputy head of the GPC and part of Saleh’s close circle, told Reuters the two sides would soon conclude talks on preparing for a new government and signing the deal.

“All of these steps, I’m optimistic will be completed in the next 10 to 15 days,” he said in an interview. “What we need more time for is finding a new (presidential) election date.”

Barakani said negotiations over how to run the election could delay the poll until January or February. “The conditions in the country for elections are not there yet,” he said. “We’re used to these things taking six months.”

Tensions remain high in Yemen, where eight months of anti-Saleh protests, sporadic armed clashes and economic disruption have pushed the country deeper into misery. The US and neighbouring Saudi Arabia fear the turmoil may give al Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing more freedom to operate.

Saleh, who has been convalescing in Riyadh since a June bomb attack on his compound, last week gave Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour the authority to sign the Gulf transition plan on his behalf, in what some analysts saw as a way for him to allow the plan to pass without stooping to sign it himself.

But some diplomats in Sanaa expressed concerns that Saleh, a master of political survival, may later use his remaining presidential powers to reject the deal.

Saleh has three times backed out of signing the Gulf Cooperation Council’s original plan, which stipulated that he would resign 30 days after signing.

The opposition and ruling party recently agreed to modify the plan to allow the transition to occur via an early election.

STICKING POINT

At least one sticking point remains. The opposition wants Saleh to transfer all his powers to the vice president before the poll to prevent him from using them to sway the vote. The ruling party says Saleh should quit only after the election.

“The president leaving through a political agreement? I reject it today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow,” Barakani said at his office in Sanaa, surrounded by presidential guards.

Ruling party moderates have been willing to concede the opposition demand, but hardliners like Barakani have resisted.

“We have a political system built on a constitution. We need to respect it,” Barakani said. “The presidency is selected based on an electoral system. Why should we destroy this government just to satisfy a few dozen people?”

Tens of thousands of Yemenis have staged sustained protests demanding Saleh’s unconditional removal. Many say they will stay on the streets until Saleh and all of his relatives and allies are out of power, no matter whether a political deal is reached.

Speculation has swirled over when Saleh might come back from Saudi Arabia — and whether his return might push Yemen back to the edge of civil war between his forces and opposing tribesmen.

Barakani said he expected Saleh back in Yemen by October, as long as doctors approved, arguing that…

Refugees in South Yemen Will not Leave Schools but to Own Homes

Sanaa, September 18, 2011- Refugees in south Yemen refused on Saturday to leave the schools where they sought shelter after battles erupted between the army and Al-Qaida in Abyan province months ago, sources reported.

Tens of thousands of families sought shelters inside schools in the provinces of Aden and Lahj, and lately the government ordered to transfer them to refuges outside the provinces to evacuate the schools for the new school year.

The website quoted school headmasters in Aden, who asked not to be named, as saying that refugees have demanded to return them to their homes in Abyan not to send them to stadium and refugee camps as well as compensating them.

“The refugees said the stadium in Aden to which the government wants to transfer them is not suitable. They are also determined to resist their relocation but to their homes in Abyan,” the website reported.

The headmasters were also quoted as saying that there were orders to suspend teaching until the problem of the refugees is solved.

The government said last month that about 108000 refugees fled Abyan to Aden and Lahj due to the battles between the army and Al-Qaida.

Lately, Ahmed Al-Kuhlani, head of the Refuge Camp Management Unit, appealed for more international support to help the displaced persons, as he pointed to measures to relocate those inside schools out Aden and Lahj.

Earlier, Al-Kuhlani expected the refugees could return to their homes after the army cleared some cities in Abyan of Al-Qaida militants. But he said the time to return depends on clearing the cities of explosives and restoring basic services.

Source: Yemen Post

Clashes Erupt in Yemen, and a Sit-In Is Attacked

By LAURA KASINOF

September 17, 2011

SANA, Yemen — Explosions rocked Yemen’s capital early Saturday morning as clashes broke out between security forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh and fighters aligned with opposition tribal leaders.

Simultaneously, security forces attacked the western edge of an antigovernment sit-in at Sana University, a long-running fixture here, around 2 a.m. Eight protesters were wounded by gunfire and shrapnel, said doctors at the field hospital inside the protest area. At least some heavy artillery was used, protesters said. The reason for the attack on the protest was still unclear by Saturday evening.

A clash between government forces and tribesmen loyal to the Ahmar family, Mr. Saleh’s main political rivals, ignited the fighting in the Hasaba neighborhood in northern Sana.

At least eight loud explosions echoed across the city early Saturday morning, while nearly the entire city was left in darkness because electricity had been cut.

An official statement from the office of Sheik Sadiq al-Ahmar, the patriarch of the Ahmar family, accused security forces of shelling the Ahmar compound.

A Yemeni official said that fighting started after the Ahmars brought more tribal fighters into Sana, set up new checkpoints along the road and attacked a police station with rocket-propelled grenades.

“If they are going to have armed tribesmen setting up checkpoints everywhere, violence is going to be the result,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the news media about the subject. The official said that no members of the security forces were killed in Saturday’s violence, and Mr. Ahmar’s office did not announce any deaths among the tribal fighters.

The conflict between the government and the Ahmars escalated into an all-out war for two weeks in May, after Mr. Saleh reneged on a promise to transfer power.

U.S. increases Yemen drone strikes

By Karen DeYoung, Published: September 18

The Obama administration has significantly increased the frequency of drone strikes and other air attacks against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen in recent months amid rising concern about political collapse there.

Some of the the strikes, carried out by the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have been focused in the southern part of the country, where insurgent forces have for the first time conquered and held territory as the Yemeni government continues to struggle against escalating opposition to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s 33-year rule.

Unlike in Pakistan, where the CIA has presidential authorization to launch drone strikes at will, each U.S. attack in Yemen — and those being conducted in nearby Somalia, most recently on Thursday near the southern port city of Kismayo — requires White House approval, senior administration officials said.

The officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter on the record, said intended targets must be drawn from an approved list of key members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula deemed by U.S. intelligence officials to be involved in planning attacks against the West. White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan last week put their number at “a couple of dozen, maybe.”

Although several unconfirmed strikes each week have been reported by local media in Yemen and Somalia, the administration has made no public acknowledgment of the escalated campaign, and officials who discussed the increase declined to provide numbers.

The heightened air activity coincides with the administration’s determination this year that AQAP, as the Yemen-based group is known, poses a more significant threat to the United States than the core al-Qaeda group based in Pakistan. The administration has also concluded that AQAP has recruited at least a portion of the main insurgent group in Somalia, al-Shabab, to its anti-Western cause.

From its initial months in office, the Obama administration has debated whether to extend the air attacks that have proved so effective in Pakistan to the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Military and intelligence officials have long argued in favor of attacks against al-Shabab camps in Somalia, which have been under overhead surveillance for years. Other officials have questioned the legal and moral justification for intervening in what, until recently, has been a largely domestic conflict.

The administration has said its legal authority to conduct such strikes, whether with fixed-wing planes, cruise missiles or drones, derives from the 2001 congressional resolution authorizing attacks against al-Qaeda and protection of the U.S. homeland, as well as the international law of self-defense.

“The United States does not view our authority to use military force against al-Qaeda as being restricted solely to ‘hot’ battlefields like Afghanistan,” Brennan said in remarks prepared for delivery Friday night at Harvard Law School. “We reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves.”

More fighting breaks ceasefire in Yemen capital

SANAA | Sun Sep 18, 2011

(Reuters) - Fighting broke out in a northern district of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Sunday, the latest breach of an uneasy ceasefire between tribesmen opposed to President Ali Abdullah Saleh and troops loyal to him.

Shelling could be heard near the home of a prominent anti-Saleh tribal leader in the Hasaba district, site of weeks of fighting that began in May and brought the impoverished Arab state to the brink of civil war.

The family of anti-Saleh tribal leader Sadeq al-Ahmar said the Republican Guard, commanded by Saleh's son, had shelled their house.

State media and a security source blamed the fighting on the tribesmen, who have sided with protesters demanding the resignation of Saleh, saying they had attacked the Interior Ministry building in Hasaba armed with a variety of weapons.

Several civilians were hurt in the attack by the tribesmen, state television said.

Tensions that have been bubbling in the past week have led to two earlier outbreaks of fighting in the capital.

On Thursday, mediators from neighboring Saudi Arabia intervened to help end the street fighting, which was the fiercest in recent weeks, diplomatic sources said.

Saleh, recovering in Saudi Arabia from a June assassination attempt, is holding on to power despite international pressure to quit and eight months of protests against his 33-year rule.

The United States and Saudi Arabia fear unrest in Yemen will embolden al Qaeda's Yemen-based regional wing to launch strikes in the region and beyond.