Yemen Protesters Hold Rival Rallies
Pro- and anti-regime activists held rallies on Friday as loyalists celebrated news that Yemen's president was out of intensive care in Riyadh after treatment for bomb blast wounds.
Opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh intensified their pressure to form an interim ruling council, agreeing on seven names from across Yemen to be presented to Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi as candidates.
Tens of thousands of protesters demanding Saleh's replacement by an interim council massed at Sanaa's "Change Square" and nearby Sittin Street to push for a quick transition of power.
Large numbers of Yemenis loyal to the embattled leader, meanwhile, gathered a few kilometers away at Sabbeen Square to celebrate after state media said Saleh was making a quick recovery and out of intensive care at a Saudi hospital.
State media put the number of pro-Saleh demonstrators in Sanaa at millions, a figure impossible to verify.
"The people want a new Yemen," shouted anti-regime protesters. "The people want a transitional council," their chants rang across Sittin Street, which has since January been hosting weekly anti-Saleh demonstrations.
Tens of thousands of anti-regime demonstrators also took to the streets in Taez, Yemen's second-largest city which is at the forefront of protests against Saleh. Demonstrations also took place in other cities.
Saleh has not been seen in public since he was wounded in a bomb attack on his presidential compound on June 3 and there have been conflicting reports about his health since he was flown to Riyadh last Saturday for treatment.
The attack itself was an assassination bid, likely an "inside job" using an explosive device, not a mortar or shells as initially reported, according to U.S. experts.
STRATFOR, a U.S.-based authority on strategic and tactical intelligence issues, said its assessment was based on an evaluation of photographs taken of the blast site, a mosque inside Saleh's compound in Sanaa.
A Saudi official said the 69-year-old Yemeni president's health was "stable" and that he was waiting for doctors to fix a date for cosmetic surgery. Saleh would undergo an operation to treat "light burns on the scalp", he said.
As Saleh's health reportedly improved, however, his opponents have kept pressing his deputy to establish an interim ruling council to prevent him from returning to power.
Representatives of the youth protesters and official opposition parties agreed Thursday on four names from south Yemen and three from the north, representing all political formations, as potential candidates for the proposed council, protest organizers said on Friday.
"The names will be announced within two days," said a member requesting anonymity.
"Hadi has to declare clearly his support to the Yemeni revolution in order for the youth to continue to trust him," said Waleed al-Amari from the media committee of youth protesters.
"If he does not, we will deal with all the remnants of the regime as a fait accompli that has to be removed to allow the achievement of the aims of the revolution," he added.
But a government official ruled out any transfer of power before the return of the veteran president.
"It is impossible to talk about a transition of power before the return of the president," deputy information minister Abdo al-Janadi told reporters on Thursday.
Saleh has come under mounting international pressure to quit as five months of protests have drawn powerful tribes into the conflict, sparking deadly fighting with loyalist security forces on the streets of Sanaa.
And the United States has warned that the turmoil in Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland is playing into the hands of al-Qaida.
Saleh's government has been a key partner in the U.S. “war on terror", while always denying having allowed US strikes on its soil, insisting its own forces carry out the operations.
In Washington, however, CIA chief Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee that US counter-terrorism operations against extremists in Yemen, including al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), were continuing.
Tension has been high in southern Yemen on Friday as troops push to regain control of the city of Zinjibar, held by suspected al-Qaida gunmen since late May.
Government officials say most of Zinjibar is in the hands of jihadists but the opposition accuses Saleh of exaggerating the al-Qaida threat in a desperate bid to ease foreign pressure on his 33-year rule.
Three family members of a suspected al-Qaida member were killed on Friday in an air raid on presumed hideouts of the jihadist network in the Jaar area of the southern province of Abyan.
Source: Agence France Presse
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