Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who escaped an attempt on his life by opponents, will only cede power through the ballot box and the country will descend into civil war if he is forced from office, his foreign minister said. A popular uprising against Saleh's 33-year rule, high profile defections, and an assassination attempt in June which left him with severe burns and forced him to undergo eight operations have all failed to persuade him to give up. “President Saleh made this very clear. He repeatedly said he is ready to transfer power anytime, but through early elections, through the ballot box and by adhering to the constitution,” Abubakr Al-Qirbi told Reuters in an interview. “Now the issue is for the ruling party and the opposition parties to agree on a date for early elections,” he said. Saleh, 70, has brought relative stability and unity to the impoverished tribal state, which is awash with weaponry and corruption and beset by separatism in the south, a Shi'ite uprising in the north and a growing Al-Qaeda presence. When he first became North Yemen's president in 1978, Yemen had suffered two decades of civil war and violence, and the two presidents who preceded him had both been assassinated. Qirbi said the timetable set for a transfer of power under a deal, brokered by Gulf states and Washington, was not realistic. Under the agreement, Saleh and the opposition have 30 days to form a national unity government after which Saleh would resign and elections would follow 60 days later. “This time schedule has proven to be difficult to implement ... Elections cannot take place in 60 days. Therefore, if President Saleh resigns after 30 days and no election can take place in 60 days we will run into a constitutional vacuum in the country,” Qirbi said. “The president is not scrapping the agreement. It is just the timetable for the implementation that need to be readdressed,” he said. The GCC mediated three deals with Yemeni opposition parties under which Saleh would step down and be spared prosecution for bloody crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters who took to the streets, emboldened by Egyptians and Tunisians who ousted their autocratic leaders.
