Yemen's Saleh says only poll defeat will make him quit
Monday, 21 February 2011
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power since 1978, said on Monday that only defeat at the ballot box will make him quit, as he faced growing calls to step down, as Yemeni clerics prohibited the use of force against protesters.
"If they want me to quit, I will only leave through the ballot box," Saleh told a news conference as thousands of protesters, including opposition MPs, gathered outside Sanaa University to demand his departure.
"The opposition is raising the level of their demands, some of which are illicit," the Yemeni leader said.
Saleh, whose long reign makes him one of the Middle East's great survivors, said the protests were "not new," accusing his opponents of having been behind the demonstrations for a while.
The president's comments came as Yemeni police shot dead a protester and wounded four others in the main southern city of Aden on Monday, according to witnesses and medics.
The death of Ali al-Khalaqi took to 12 the toll of those killed in Aden during anti-regime protests since February 16.
At least 76 people, including seven soldiers, have been wounded in Aden since the protests began, according to an AFP tally based on figures supplied by medics and officials.
Pro- and anti-Saleh demonstrators have also clashed violently over the past week in the capital Sanaa.
Meanwhile, Yemeni clerics issued a statement on Monday prohibiting the use of force against protesters, which they described as a "crime," and calling for a ban on arbitrary arrest and torture.
"Any act of beating or killing of protesters is a delibrate crime," said the association of Yemeni clerics headed by Sheikh Abdul Majid Zindani.
The clerics demanded a ban on "arbitrary arrest and (all forms of) torture" and said that pro-government rallies should be held away from protest demonstrations to avoid the deadly clashes of recent days.
Zindani is blacklisted as a "global terrorist" by Washington for his suspected links to al-Qaeda but the association groups clerics of both Yemen's Sunni majority and its Zaidi minority, from which under-fire President Ali Abdullah Saleh hails.
Saleh has outlived the Cold War division, civil war and an al-Qaeda insurgency but is now scrambling to see his term through to the end as sustained popular uprisings in Sanaa and Aden test his grip on power.
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