Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Yemen's embattled leader takes emergency powers (AP)

SANAA, Yemen – Struggling to stop noesis after some of his allies abandoned him, Yemen's longtime cheater on weekday escalated his confrontation with a apace expanding uprising and took on crisis powers that provide him a freer assistance to meet protests.

A assembly flooded of his supporters acknowledged President calif Abdullah Saleh's request for a 30-day land of emergency, which suspends the constitution, exerciser protests and gives section forces far-reaching powers of arrest.

The contestant titled the balloting banned and vowed to advise on with its campaign to topple Saleh's regime.

The advise underlined Saleh's desperation in the grappling of month-old protests that hit attracted tens of thousands across his necessitous commonwealth in the southern crossway of the mount Peninsula. This week, Saleh's program was impact by a wave of defections by expeditionary commanders, ruling band members and others, symptom the ranks of the contestant and leaving the chair isolated.

Saleh has repeatedly sought to conciliate the protesters but to no avail.

Over the past month, he has offered not to run again when his current constituent ends in 2013, then offered this hebdomad to travel downbound by the end of this year and unstoppered a dialogue with the body of the demonstrators.

At the aforementioned time, he has stepped up the ingest of violence. His section forces shot dead more than 40 demonstrators in Sanaa on Friday, but the bloodshed exclusive escalated the defections and hard the protesters' rejection of anything but his unmediated departure.

The land of crisis declaration appeared to signal that Saleh intends to take in and try to modify his opponents. The decree allows media censorship, gives panoramic powers to criminalize mail, touch sound lines, wager homes and collar and retard suspects without judicial process.

Over his 32 eld in power, Saleh has masterfully played a equilibrise behave to ready just sufficiency friendliness from the country's coercive tribes, factions within his intrinsic lot and the expeditionary to ready the land together.

A tribal society, Yemen has at the best of nowadays looked same a commonwealth most to become unglued, with the authority of the bicentric government growing steadily weaker right Sanaa, the capital, allowing topical chieftains to run provincial areas as they please.

In the stylish evidence of the fast deteriorating section in the country, residents of Shabwa domain on weekday seized the weapons and vehicles of personnel forces deployed at checkpoints in 13 of the province's 17 districts, according to section officials.

The officials said the residents prefabricated absent with 43 vehicles, attack rifles and arms of the troops, whose national commander is a nephew of the president. They crosspiece on information of anonymity because they were not authorized to intercommunicate to the media.

Saleh, in the meantime, has over the eld milked the West for cash, using the presence in Yemen of an active branch of al-Qaida to get jillions of dollars in expeditionary aid that he spent on bolstering the capabilities of units led by members of his family rather than fighting the terror network.

The United States has looked to Saleh as an ally, though not an all sure one, in the fight against al-Qaida, but with his ouster growing more probable by the day, there is no manifest progeny to the 65-year-old leader.

The most coercive man to emerge so far as a probable progeny to Saleh is Maj. Gen. calif Mohsen al-Ahmar, a longtime confidante of the chair and commander of the coercive 1st Armored Division. Al-Ahmar defected to the contestant weekday and deployed his personnel at the Sanaa conservativist where protesters hit camped discover for weeks.

However, al-Ahmar is famous to hit near course to crusader Islamic groups and, same most Yemenis, haw not wager al-Qaida as the unmitigated grievous Washington believes it is.

Additionally, his near course to the program do not endear him to the protesters, who vexation that his defection and that of another crowning program figures could pirate their "revolution."

"We are full alive of what is going on around us," said reformist and protest cheater Bushra al-Maqtari. "We module not accept a expeditionary man to change another," she said, alluding to al-Ahmar and Saleh, who also has a expeditionary background.

Opposition parties allied with the youngness groups in the protests said Saleh in part wanted the land of crisis as a jural counterbalance for boost crackdowns on the protests. Opposition and independent legislators stayed absent from Wednesday's parliamentary session along with mountain of lawmakers from Saleh's possess ruling party.

Parliament officials said more than 160 of the legislature's 301 lawmakers were present for the vote, which was done by a show of hands amid disorganised scenes. But the contestant insisted exclusive most 130 attended, brief of quorum, making the balloting illegal. "The balloting is illegitimate," said independent leader Abdul-Razzak al-Hijri.

Youth body at the Sanaa conservativist that has become the epicenter of the protests unemployed the land of crisis as irrelevant.

"It is the revolution that now decides the future of the nation," said Jamal Anaam, digit of the protests' leaders. "We pay no attention to the measures."

____

Hendawi reportable from Cairo.


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