Yemen leader offers to devolve power

SANAA—Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh bowed on Thursday to pressure after a month of violent protests, but his pledge to devolve power to parliament was swiftly rejected as too late by the opposition.

Speaking to tens of thousands of people at a stadium in the Sanaa, the veteran leader of the strategic US ally promised to hold a referendum on a new constitution later this year.

He also ordered his security forces to ensure the safety of anti-government protesters after weeks of unrest in which some 30 people have been killed, part of a wave of popular unrest that has rewritten the rules of Arab politics.

“I propose a new initiative to avoid sedition,” he announced in the nationally televised address, a day after fresh violence saw police open fire on demonstrators near Sanaa University, killing one.

He said he would hold a “referendum before the end of the year on a new constitution clearly stipulating the separation of powers” between the president and the parliament.

The new charter would “install a parliamentary regime giving all executive powers to a government elected by parliament,” he added.

On the surface the announcement amounts to a political earthquake in an impoverished, deeply tribal country that has been smothered in Saleh’s suffocating embrace for 32 years.

But the autocratic leader said he expected his offer to be rejected by the opposition, which on Sunday said dialogue was at an end and vowed to step up protests after Saleh refused demands to resign this year.

Within an hour of the announcement, a spokesman for the main parliamentary opposition group rejected the promised reforms as “too late,” signalling political unrest will continue.

“The president’s initiative is too late and constitutes the last breath of the political regime, which protesters demand an end to,” opposition spokesman Mohammad al-Sabri told AFP.

Demonstrators camped at a square they have dubbed Al-Taghyeer (Change) near Sanaa University also rebuffed Saleh’s offer.

“We will only accept the president’s departure,” one of them told the crowd using a microphone.

A thousand doctors in white coats and dozens of journalists joined the sit-in as pressure mounted on Saleh to resign.

Yemen is a crucial partner of the United States in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has plotted attacks against US targets from its redoubts in the country’s unruly tribal regions.

It is also battling sectarian and secessionist violence, which undermine stability and development in one of the poorest countries in the region.

US involvement in Yemen, including special forces advisors, has depended entirely on Saleh, who has dominated the country since coming to power in a military coup in 1978. He became president of a reunified Yemen in 1990.

Washington has expressed concern about violence but President Barack Obama’s administration has not pressured Saleh to leave office in the way it leaned on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak before his ouster last month.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner urged the government to investigate the use of “excessive force” in Wednesday’s deadly police raid.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that Washington wanted the Yemeni leadership to focus on political reforms that would respond to the “legitimate aspirations” of its people.