President Ali Abdullah Saleh speaks during a visit to a Republican Guards brigade loyal to him near Sanaa on Saturday. (Reuters/Yemen Army)

By REUTERS ARABNEWS

DUBAI: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh flew to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to sign a deal brokered by Gulf states that would ease him from office, Yemeni state media said, after protracted protests against his rule that have crippled the country.

No more details were given about the signing ceremony, to which opposition representatives were invited. Saleh has backed out of such a deal at the last minute three times already.

The development came after UN envoy Jamal Benomar, with support from US and European diplomats, managed to devise a compromise to implement the power transfer deal crafted by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

“The president … arrived this morning in Riyadh on a visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, following an invitation from the Saudi leadership, to attend the signing of the Gulf initiative and its operational mechanism,” state news agency Saba said.

The political deadlock over protests aimed at ousting Saleh after 33 years of rule has rekindled conflicts with Yemen’s Islamist militants and separatists, threatening anarchy in a country Washington regards as a front line against Al-Qaeda.

Saba said Saleh had received a telephone call from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday to thank him “for his efforts to extract Yemen out of the crisis in a peaceful way.”

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Note by the editor: YES YOU CAN! It is excellent that with never-ending patience Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council seem to finally manage to assist Yemen in the transition to a new Government (Let’s wait and see until we can say ‘Democracy’). That is the way it should be: Muslims assisting Muslims to solve their own problems, without NATO and other foreign interference. Every aid has ‘strings attached’. The ‘strings’ of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council are simply that they want to have peace on their borders, not a bad thing. The ‘strings attached’ by NATO and other ‘super power’ countries are more questionable and therefore it is better to beware of them.