Hadi to sign GCC plan ‘within a week’

Yemeni Vice-President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi will sign a Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) initiative to arrange for a transfer of power in Yemen “within a week,” according to a  high-level Saudi official. On Monday, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been absent from the country for more than three months, authorised his deputy to negotiate a power transfer with the opposition. “Within a week, the vice president will sign the Gulf Initiative in the name of the president,” said the Saudi official, who requested anonymity. The GCC sets the path for a peaceful transition of power out of Saleh’s hands. The presidential decree gave Hadi “the necessary constitutional authority” to endorse the plan and to negotiate a power transfer mechanism with the opposition. According to the Saudi official, “among the guarantees demanded by Salah are that his son be kept in the next government.” Saleh, in power since 1978, has since January faced protests over nepotism and corruption from reform activists inspired by the Arab Spring. He left the country three months ago for Saudi Arabia where he has been recovering from a June 3 attack on his presidential compound. Saleh has refused to hand over power to his deputy or sign the GCC plan. On Thursday, the United States said it hoped the GCC proposal would be signed within a week. Six university students were wounded in clashes between rival groups at Sanaa University on the first day of school on Saturday, after fighting in the capital overnight between competing army unit left one dissident soldier dead. Renewed clashed between the army and fighters linked to Al Qaeda in the southern city of Zinjibar left six soldiers wounded. Students who backed a resumption of classes and those who did not came to blows and threw stones and other projectiles at each other, according to those involved and a medical official. Shouting “No lessons, no teaching, before the ouster of the president (Saleh),” hundreds of students marched through the university campus. calling for a boycott of classes and trying to keep their classmates from going to their lessons, an AFP journalist said.