Sanaa: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, faced with more than eight months of street protests demanding his ouster, said on Sunday he is ready to step down but his opponents said the apparent offer was a sham.
“I don’t want power and I will give it up in the coming days,” Yemen’s veteran strongman said in a televised speech during which he launched a tirade against his opponents to whom he refused to hand over. Saleh, 69, said it was “impossible to let them (the opposition) destroy the country,” whereas there were “sincere men, whether they be military or civilian” who were capable of governing Yemen.
The president, in power for 33 years, has refused to quit under the terms of a transition plan drawn up by Yemen’s oil-rich Arab neighbours in the Gulf.
“For the past nine months the Yemeni people have resisted this great plot in a way no other Arab country has resisted, not Tunisia or Egypt or Libya,” Saleh said of the protests which have wracked Yemen since January.
“We will meet again in the upcoming days to explain to the people the truth and developments in all transparency,” he said. Yemen’s new Nobel Peace Prize laureate, leading women’s activist Tawakkul Karman, said Saleh’s latest offer could not be trusted and protests would continue. (AFP)
