GCC draws road map for Saleh's departure

Protesters shout slogans during a demonstration demanding the ouster of Yemen's President SANAA - Arabstoday   The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) presented Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Thursday a revised version of its proposal to defuse the crisis in the

country . The latest proposal calls for the resignation of the president within 30 days from the date of its acceptance. It guarantees that Saleh will not be prosecuted and a new government in Sanaa will be installed within 90 days from the date of Saleh's departure. "This new plan was presented by GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif Al-Zayani, who held wide-ranging talks with Saleh in the Yemeni capital Thursday," said a spokesman of the GCC General Secretariat in Riyadh. The spokesman said that Al-Zayani and Saleh discussed the proposal, which calls for installation of a unity government with 50 percent of the members from the ruling party, 40 percent from the opposition groups and 10 percent from other factions. The proposal, supported by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, asks all parties to ensure the holding of a presidential poll within two months from the date of Saleh's departure. Yemen’s official Saba news agency quoted the president as welcoming the GCC's diplomatic efforts to end the crisis and expressed his readiness to “positively deal with the efforts to restore Yemen's stability, security and unity.”

The new GCC proposal also grants legal immunity to Saleh, members of his family and officials of his presidency as well as his close aides once power is transferred and a new government installed. The spokesman said that Al-Zayani's talks with other Yemeni officials including opposition members on Thursday in Sanaa also covered GCC-Yemen relations. He said that Yemen had been in negotiations with the GCC for membership and hoped to join the group by 2016. The GCC has already approved Yemen's accession to several GCC panels, including the GCC Standardization Authority, Gulf Organization for Industrial Consultancy (GOIC), GCC Auditing and Accounting Authority and Gulf Radio & TV Authority.

It is unclear how Yemen's membership negotiations with the GCC will proceed during the crisis or when the new government comes to power in Sanaa. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has underscored the OIC’s support for the GCC initiative, which he said aimed to find a way out of the current crisis and preserve Yemen’s stability, security and unity.

Meanwhile  fierce clashes  between armed tribesmen and troops of Yemen's Republican Guard in the southern province of Lahij killed at least eight people, six of them soldiers, a security official said Friday. The clashes broke out overnight when tension linked to the army's refusal to redeploy a Republican Guard unit from the mountain village of Labus erupted into violence, tribal sources said. Tribesmen regard the presence of the troops as a provocation.A security official said six troops and two tribesmen were killed while five other people were wounded in the fighting.

The clashes began after armed tribesmen attacked the military post early on Thursday, killing two of the soldiers and one of the tribesmen, a tribal source said. The clashes continued through the day and night as the gunmen surrounded the military camp, witnesses said.Early on Friday, the situation remained tense in Labus, an officer from the army unit told AFP. A similar gunfight between the Republican Guards and tribesmen left one soldier dead and three others wounded in Lahij on April 12.The clash, in which one of the gunmen was also wounded, erupted at a checkpoint in the village of Al-Hada, near Labus.

Yemen, a deeply tribal country on the Arabian Peninsula, has been the site of deadly protests since late January calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The protests have led to defections and clashes within the army. But the Republican Guard, headed by Saleh's son, Ahmed, has remained loyal to the embattled president. Besides anti-regime protests, Yemen has been battling a secessionist movement in the south, a Shiite rebellion in the north, and an Al-Qaeda resurgence on its soil.