Opponents of Yemen's president stepped up a campaign on Friday to force him out, but Ali Abdullah Saleh was defiant as he addressed thousands of supporters and urged the opposition to join peace talks. "We call on the opposition to consult their consciences and come to dialogue and reach an agreement for the security and stability of the country," Saleh told supporters at a rally.
Worried that al Qaeda's active Yemen wing will exploit a prolonged standoff in the impoverished country, Yemen's Gulf Arab neighbours have offered to mediate an end to the crisis. Saleh's opponents have rejected that offer, however, fearing that talks in Riyadh, long an ally of Saleh, would seek to keep him in office until his term ends in 2013.
A shrewd political operator, Saleh has warned of civil war and the break-up of Yemen if he is forced to step aside before organising parliamentary and presidential elections. He has offered the new elections this year as part of political reforms, but says he should stay in power to oversee the change or hand over to what he calls "safe hands".
Yet even before the protests inspired by Egypt and Tunisia, Saleh was struggling to quell a separatist rebellion in the south and cement a truce with Shi'ite rebels in the north. Saleh's speech on Friday came as hundreds of thousands protested against him in Sanaa, Aden and Taiz, and clerics and tribal leaders who were once his allies issued a statement saying the president must go now and his relatives in the military and the security forces must be dismissed.
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