SANA'A: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Friday a plan to negotiate his resignation in the face of mass protests was a “belligerent intervention”, apparently rejecting a Gulf Arab plan to end his 32-year rule. Saleh, facing an unprecedented challenge from hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country, initially had accepted an offer by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to hold talks with the opposition. But on Wednesday, Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani told reporters the GCC instead would strike a deal for Saleh to step down. “We don't get our legitimacy from Qatar or from anyone else...we reject this belligerent intervention,” Saleh told cheering supporters Friday in the capital Sana'a. However, the Saudi Press Agency reported Friday that a source in the president's office said that it was clear that Saleh welcomed the GCC efforts to reconcile his differences with the opposition. Meanwhile, witnesses reported that Yemeni security forces shot dead two protesters and wounded dozens on Friday in the flashpoint city of Taiz south of the capital Sana'a, as hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters marched through the streets in a funeral procession for protesters killed earlier this week. One witness said the two protesters were killed by gunfire, and that their bodies were taken to Safwa hospital. Another said protesters had gathered at Al-Shaab school near Al-Huriya (Liberty) Square, where regime opponents have been holding a sit-in since February. And others said some of the wounded suffered from tear gas inhalation, while others were wounded by bullets. Some 21 people died in clashes this week in Taiz and the Red Sea port of Hudaida. In Sana'a pro-democracy protesters held a “Friday of firmness”, shouting “You're next, you leader of the corrupt,” as armored vehicles and security forces deployed across the city. Some 4 km away, tens of thousands of Saleh loyalists were marching, waving pictures of the president and banners that read “No to terrorism, no to sabotage”. The United States appears ready to push aside a long-time ally against Al-Qaeda to avoid a chaotic collapse of the poorest Arab state. Washington froze its largest aid package for Yemen in February after protests began, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
