Leader to go as Yemen generals switch sides

“Any dissent within the military institution will negatively affect the whole nation,” President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on TV.

“The nation is far greater than the ambition of individuals who want to seize power.”

There was no response from the opposition, which has won the loyalty of influential clergy and tribal leaders, along with the powerful army commanders now calling for Mr Saleh’s removal.

Mr Saleh had rejected an earlier opposition demand that he resign by the end of the year.

Presidential spokesman Ahmed al-Sufi said that Mr Saleh met senior Yemeni officials, military commanders and tribal leaders last night and vowed not to hand power to the military.

He said the defection of military commanders including former confidante Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar was a “mutiny and a coup against constitutional legitimacy.”

“I don’t wish and will not accept the transfer of power to the military,” Mr Saleh said. “The military institution remains united. The era of coups is gone.”

Gen. Al-Ahmar, commander of the army’s powerful 1st Armoured Division, deployed tanks and armoured vehicles at the Defence Ministry, the TV building, the Central Bank and a central Sanaa square that has become the centre of the month long, anti-Saleh protests.

In response, the Republican Guards, an elite force led by one of Mr Saleh’s sons, deployed troops backed by armour outside the presidential palace on the capital’s southern outskirts.

The rival deployments created a potentially explosive situation at the city as news of a flurry of protest resignations stepped up pressure on Mr Saleh, Yemen’s leader for 32 years, to step down.

The West’s main concern is Yemen’s al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, formed in 2009, which has attacked the West and tried to blow up airliners.