President Ali Abdullah Saleh's address late Sunday in which he called for elections while at the same time said he was committed to a Gulf power-transfer deal which would see him step down immediately, triggered uproar at Change Square, epicentre of anti-regime protests which have rocked Yemen since late January.

"The youth will not accept," said Walid al-Amari, a leading member of the youth protest committee, addressing demonstrators at the square near the capital's main university. "They will not give up until they achieve all the goals of the revolution," he added, referring to demands that the veteran leader quit power immediately.

Part of Monday's events would be a protests at Change Square by women demonstrators, organisers said. Saleh, who unexpectedly returned Friday to Yemen after a months-long stay in Saudi Arabia for treatment from bomb blast wounds, challenged the opposition to head to early elections.

"You who are running after power, let us head together toward the ballot boxes. We are against coups," Saleh said in a speech aired on state television on the 49th anniversary of the September 26, 1962 revolution that saw Yemen proclaimed a republic.

"We have repeatedly called for power transfer through the ballot box... let us head together to dialogue and peaceful rotation over power through the ballot box and early presidential elections as the Gulf initiative stipulates," he said.

The 69-year-old president has repeatedly refused to sign a power transfer deal brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council in terms of which he would hand power to Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi in return for immunity from prosecution.

But he said Sunday he had authorised Hadi to sign the deal on his behalf.

"We are committed to implementing the Gulf initiative as it is, and to signing it by Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, whom we have authorised in a presidential decree," he said.
Opposition Islah Party official, Abdullah Saatar, dismissed Saleh's speech as being purely political manipulation.

"This man did not say anything new. He is still manoeuvring, and his speech is just an attempt to skirt his way around the Gulf initiative," Saatar said speaking to opposition-linked Suhail satellite channel.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Sanaa on Sunday demanding that Saleh be put on trial for crimes committed during his decades-long rule, hours before he spoke on television.
Saleh's security forces opened fire on the march, wounding 18 people, including one who is now in a coma, according to medics.

The protesters, who chanted "Freedom! Freedom! The people want the butcher tried!" retreated to their base in Change Square after the shooting.

The Gulf-sponsored deal was meant to be finalised last week but efforts by international and regional mediators were torpedoed by intense fighting between Yemeni security forces backed by Saleh loyalists on the one side and by defected army units and dissident tribesmen on the other.

During the street battles with heavy weaponry, the security forces also repeatedly attacked protesters camped at Change Square, witnesses said.

The violence in the capital, which according to figures obtained from medics, the opposition and tribal sources left 173 people dead in one week, calmed at the weekend though the capital remains tense.
Saleh has come under pressure from the GCC, the United Nations and the United States to relinquish power. On Sunday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Yemen's powerful and wealthy Gulf neighbour, urged Yemenis to implement the Gulf Initiative.

"We see that the Gulf Initiative is still the exit to resolve the Yemeni crisis and prevent the situation (there) from getting worse," he said . On Saturday, GCC ministers condemned the violence in Yemen and echoed US and UN calls urging Saleh to "immediately" sign the initiative.