U.N. Envoy, Gulf Mediator Arrive in Sanaa

A U.N. envoy to Yemen and the Gulf Cooperation Council chief arrived in Sanaa Monday, state news agency Saba and an airport official said, as deadly clashes raged in the capital.

"U.N. envoy Jamal Benomar and the convoy accompanying him arrived in Sanaa," Saba reported, while an official at Sanaa airport told Agence France Presse that GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani also arrived in the restive capital.

A Western diplomat in Sanaa told AFP that the signing of a U.N. roadmap which sets a mechanism for the transfer of power from embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh hands to his deputy was scheduled for later Monday.

The two men arrived amid a deadly crackdown by Saleh's forces on anti-regime protesters which have left 46 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Two protesters were also killed in the flashpoint city of Taez, south of Sanaa.

A high-level Saudi official told AFP on Saturday that Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi will sign a Gulf-brokered initiative "within a week" after the United States on Thursday said that this is what it had "hoped" would happen.

Saleh, who has ruled Yemen since 1978, has been recovering in Saudi Arabia from a June 3 attack on his presidential compound, but has so far refused to hand power to his deputy or to sign the Gulf Initiative.

His refusal has angered the plan's Gulf sponsors who, along with many in the international community, fear that a total meltdown of political order in Yemen could pave the way for al-Qaida-linked militants to overrun the country.

The GCC plan, proposed last spring, calls on Saleh to step down as president and hand over all constitutional authorities to Hadi. In return, Saleh would receive amnesty from prosecution for himself and his family.

The U.N. roadmap was drawn up in two weeks of talks in July in Yemen between the opposition and leading figures from the ruling General People's Congress and chaired by Benomar. It stipulates that Saleh transfer power to Hadi.

Whereas the Gulf plan stipulates a one-month interim period ending with Saleh's resignation, the U.N. roadmap provides for an extended period of up to six months.