Yemen president offers to quit by end of year

YEMEN’S president offered to step down by the end of the year yesterday in a bid to appease mounting demands for his resignation, but opposition groups showed no sign of easing up on efforts to force him out.

Weeks of protests against the 32-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the impoverished Arabian state has raised alarm in Western capitals at the prospect of a country where al-Qaida has entrenched itself falling apart. In Cairo, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that Washington had not planned for an era without Saleh in office.

“I think things are obviously, or evidently, very unsettled in Yemen. I think it’s too soon to call an outcome. We’ve had a good working relationship with President Saleh. He’s been an important ally in the counter-terrorism arena,” Gates said speaking in Cairo.