SANA, Yemen — The United States, which long supported Yemen’s president,
even in the face of recent widespread protests, has now quietly shifted
positions and has concluded that he is unlikely to bring about the
required reforms and must be eased out of office, according to American
and Yemeni officials.
The Obama administration had maintained its support of President
Ali Abdullah Saleh
in private and refrained from directly criticizing him in public, even
as his supporters fired on peaceful demonstrators, because he was
considered a critical ally in fighting the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda.
This position has fueled criticism of the United States in some quarters
for hypocrisy for rushing to oust a repressive autocrat in Libya but
not in strategic allies like Yemen and Bahrain.
That position began to shift in the past week, administration officials
said. While American officials have not publicly pressed Mr. Saleh to
go, they have told allies that they now view his hold on office as
untenable, and they believe he should leave.
A Yemeni official said that the American position changed when the
negotiations with Mr. Saleh on the terms of his potential departure
began a little over a week ago.
“The Americans have been pushing for transfer of power since the
beginning” of those negotiations, the official said, but have not said
so publicly because “they still were involved in the negotiations.”
Those negotiations now center on a proposal for Mr. Saleh to hand over
power to a provisional government led by his vice president until new
elections are held. That principle “is not in dispute,” the Yemeni
official said, only the timing and mechanism for how he would depart.
It does remain in dispute among the student-led protesters, however, who
have rejected any proposal that would give power to a leading official
of the Saleh government.
Washington has long had a wary relationship of mutual dependence with
Mr. Saleh. The United States has provided weapons, and the Yemeni leader
has allowed the United States military and the
C.I.A. to strike at Qaeda strongholds. The State Department cables released by
WikiLeaks gave a close-up view of that uneasy interdependence: Mr. Saleh told Gen.
David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, that the United States could continue missile strikes against
Al Qaeda as long as the fiction was maintained that Yemen was conducting them.
“We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Mr. Saleh said,
according to a cable sent by the American ambassador. At other times,
however, Mr. Saleh resisted American requests. In a wry assessment of
the United States, he told
Daniel Benjamin,
the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, that Americans are
“hot-blooded and hasty when you need us,” but “cold-blooded and British
when we need you.”
The negotiations in Sana began after government-linked gunmen killed
more than 50 protesters at an antigovernment rally on March 18,
prompting a wave of defections of high-level government officials the
following week. The American and Yemeni officials who discussed the
talks did so on the condition of anonymity because the talks are private
and still in progress.
It is not clear whether the United States is discussing a safe passage
for Mr. Saleh and his family to another country, but that appears to be
the direction of the talks in Sana, the capital.
For Washington, the key to his departure would be arranging a transfer
of power that would enable the counterterrorism operation in Yemen to
continue.
One administration official referred to that concern last week, saying
that the standoff between the president and the protesters “has had a
direct adverse impact on the security situation throughout the country.”
“Groups of various stripes — Al Qaeda, Houthis, tribal elements, and
secessionists — are exploiting the current political turbulence and
emerging fissures within the military and security services for their
own gain,” the official said. “Until President Saleh is able to resolve
the current political impasse by announcing how and when he will follow
through on his earlier commitment to take tangible steps to meet
opposition demands, the security situation in Yemen is at risk of
further deterioration.”
In recent days, American officials in Washington have hinted at the change in position.
Those “tangible steps,” another official said, could include giving in to the demand that he step down.
At a State Department briefing recently, a spokesman, Mark Toner, was
questioned on whether there had been planning for a post-Saleh Yemen.
While he did not answer the question directly, he said, in part, that
counterterrorism in Yemen “goes beyond any one individual.”
In addition to the huge street demonstrations that have convulsed the
country in the last two months, the deteriorating security situation in
Yemen includes a Houthi rebellion in the north, a secessionist movement
in the south and an active Qaeda operation in the southeast. Houthi
rebels seized control of Saada Province a week ago, and armed militants
have taken over a city in the southern province of Abyan where Al Qaeda
is known to have set up a base.
Among Yemenis, there is a feeling that there is a race against the clock
to resolve the political impasse before the country implodes. In
addition to the security concerns, Yemen faces an economic crisis.
Food prices
are rising; the value of the Yemeni currency, the rial, is dropping
sharply; and dollars are disappearing from currency exchange shops.
According to the
World Food Program, the price of wheat flour has increased 45 percent since mid-March and rice by 22 percent.
Analysts have also expressed concern that Mr. Saleh is depleting the
national reserves paying for promises to keep himself in power. Mr.
Saleh has paid thousands of supporters to come to the capital to stage
pro-government protests and given out money to tribal leaders to secure
their loyalties. In February he promised to cut income taxes and raise
salaries for civil servants and the military to try to tamp down
discontent.
“It’s not a
recession,
it’s not a depression, it’s a mess,” said Mohammed Abulahom, a
prominent member of Parliament for Mr. Saleh’s governing party who now
supports the protesters.
The fact that the Americans are “seriously engaged in discussion on how
to transfer power shows their willingness to figure out a way to
transfer power,” he said.
He said the Americans “are doing what ought to be done, and we will see more pressure down the road.”
The criticism of the United States for failing to publicly support
Yemen’s protesters has been loudest here, where the protesters insist
the United States’ only concern is counterterrorism.
“We are really very, very angry because America until now didn’t help us
similar to what Mr. Obama said that Mubarak has to leave now,” said
Tawakul Karman, a leader of the antigovernment youth movement. “Obama
says he appreciated the courage and dignity of Tunisian people. He
didn’t say that for Yemeni people.”
“We feel that we have been betrayed,” she said.
Hamza Alkamaly, 23, a prominent student leader, agreed. “We students
lost our trust in the United States,” he said. “We thought the United
States would help us in the first time because we are calling for our
freedom.”
Late Saturday night, Yemen’s opposition coalition, the Joint Meetings
Parties, proposed an outline for a transfer of power that has become the
new focus of the talks. The proposal calls for power to be transferred
immediately to Vice President Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi until
presidential elections are held.
The young protesters have rejected the proposal, or any that would leave a leading Saleh official in charge.
Late Sunday, the Gulf Cooperation Council, an association of oil-rich
countries in the Persian Gulf, added its backing to the talks, issuing a
statement saying it would press the Yemeni government and opposition to
work toward an agreement to “overcome the status quo.” The group called
for a return to negotiations to “achieve the aspirations of the Yemeni
people by means of reforms.”
So far the council, including Yemen’s largest international donor, Saudi
Arabia, has not taken part in the negotiations, Yemeni officials said.
There were also more clashes between security forces and protesters on
Sunday and Monday in the city of Taiz. Hundreds of people were injured
by tear gas, rocks and gunfire. Witnesses said security forces fired at
the protesters and into the air. Reuters, speaking by phone to anonymous
hospital workers in Taiz, reported at least a dozen protesters had been
killed on Monday and 30 injured from the gunfire.
Early Monday, security forces in Hodeidah, a western port city, used to
tear gas to break up a protest march on the presidential palace there.
According to
Amnesty International, at least 95 people have died during two months of antigovernment protests.
Source: new york times
8:19 AM
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