Anti-government protesters attend a rally to demand the ouster of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa May 20, 2011. Saleh called on Friday for early elections in an apparent bid to stave off Gulf and Western pressure to leave office, as thousands rallied for and against his three-decade rule.The billboard reads, "The Friday of the people's unity."
REUTERS
"The initiative is in fact purely a coup operation but we will deal positively with it for the sake of the motherland," Ali Abdullah Saleh said of the transition plan of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.
He also warned the United States and the European Union that Al-Qaeda would benefit from the departure of his regime.
"The departure of the regime ... means the departure of Yemeni unity and the republic," he said.
"If the regime goes, Al-Qaeda will flourish in (the provinces of) Hadramout and Shabwa and Abyan, and the situation will be worse," he said, addressing "our friends in the United States and the European Union."
Saleh has been a key US ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda's Yemen-based franchise, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has claimed attacks against US and other Western interests.
The GCC has said its secretary general will head to Yemen on Saturday ahead of the planned signing of the deal it brokered.
Under the initiative, Saleh would hand power to the vice president 30 days after the agreement is signed, and he and his aides would be granted immunity from prosecution by parliament.
A national unity government led by a prime minister from the opposition would be formed, and a presidential election would follow 60 days after his departure.
The mass protests in Yemen, which broke out in January, were part of "an agenda of the major powers to export their problems and impose their tutelage on the poor because of their own economic and political problems," Saleh said.
He spoke at a military parade organised at one of the police stations in Sanaa on the occasion of the 21st anniversary of Yemen's unification, which is to be celebrated on Sunday.
Saleh charged that funding for the anti-regime protests had come from the oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf, in a rare criticism of Yemen's neighbours.
"Money flows in from abroad, including through some official channels," and also from the Muslim Brotherhood, "especially in GCC countries," according to the president.
Security forces have mounted a bloody crackdown on the protests, leaving at least 180 people dead, according to a toll compiled from reports by activists and medics.
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