Yemeni President agrees to transfer power on UN terms

PanARMENIAN.Net - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, facing an increasingly entrenched uprising against his rule, on Monday Oct 24 welcomed a U.N. Security Council resolution urging him to adopt a Gulf-mediated plan for him to transfer power, the state news agency reported.

It was Saleh's first response to the United Nations Security Council measure last week calling on him to adopt the blueprint drafted by neighbouring Gulf states for a transition to early parliamentary and presidential elections after a new opposition-led cabinet is formed and Saleh relinquishes the presidency.

Saleh has already rejected the plan three times despite escalating protests against his 33-year-long autocratic rule, saying he would only transfer power into "safe hands".

"The Yemeni president... expressed his readiness to sit down immediately at the dialogue table with the Joint Meeting Parties (opposition parties) and its partners to complete the dialogue over the operational mechanism for the (Gulf) initiative as quickly as possible and to reach the final signing of the initiative and its immediate implementation, leading to early presidential elections on a date agreed upon by all," said a statement carried by the Yemeni news agency SABA.

Ruling Yemen since 1978 through a civil war and rebel movements, Saleh has clung to power despite an assassination attempt that send him abroad for three months for medical care, defecting generals and nine months of street protests.

More than a dozen people have died in the past week, the latest wave of violence in Yemen as forces loyal to Saleh clash with soldiers siding with protesters, Reuters reported.