Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh will return from medical treatment in Saudi Arabia in days, the acting leader said yesterday as thousands celebrated what they hoped would be a new era without him.
Diplomats and analysts feel Mr Saleh’s stay in Saudi Arabia, where he had surgery for shrapnel wounds suffered in an attack on his palace on Friday, might be prolonged as Riyadh tries to broker a power transition deal to prevent the implosion of its neighbour.
International pressure has mounted on all parties to find a way to end clashes bringing Yemen to the brink of civil war due to worries it could become a failed state and home to an al-Qaeda wing, next to the world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia.
A Saudi-brokered truce was holding in Sanaa after two weeks of fighting between Mr Saleh’s forces and a powerful tribal group in which more than 200 people were killed and thousands fled.
But there was fresh fighting in the flashpoint southern city of Taiz, where the United Nations said it was investigating reports that as many as 50 have been killed in the past week.
An opposition party coalition, which joined months of street protests to end Mr Saleh’s 30-year rule, said it backed transferring power to vice-president Abu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi who is now acting leader. Mr Hadi was quoted as saying that Mr Saleh’s health was improving and he “would return to the homeland in the coming days”.
Mr Saleh (69) is being treated in a Riyadh hospital for injuries sustained in the attack, in which seven people died. A diplomat in the region said: “I don’t think the Saudis or his people want him back. He doesn’t have regional support.”
In a joint statement, German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the prime ministers of Britain, Spain and Italy, thanked Saudi Arabia for receiving Mr Saleh for treatment and called on all parties in Yemen to “find a means of reconciliation”.