Yemen Ruling Party Confirms Talks With UN Over Crisis

UN Plan Calls for 'National Reconciliation' Government

Officials within the Yemeni govenrment say that the ruling General People’s Congress has entered into talks with the United Nations about a plan that would lead to an end of months of anti-government protests and increasingly successful secessionist movements.

Sources familiar with the talks say that the UN plan is an extention of the GCC talks which over the last several months have aimed at convincing President Saleh to step down, combined with the US preference that power be turned over to Major General Hadi, at least in the “interim.”

The plan aims at a maximum six month interim period that would end with a new presidential election. The exact terms of the many reforms presumably necessary for such a vote to be remotely credible were not disclosed.

Past efforts at a deal have always ended with an angry rejection by Saleh over some minor term in the final agreement. Even if one could be reached now, with several provinces now entirely out of regime control it is unclear how much credibility an “interim” regime would have.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.