Yemen’s President Hadi warns against failure of National Dialogue

Hadi accuses ‘political camps’ of trying to ‘sabotage’ NDC peace talks One person has been killed and eight injured in violent clashes between protesters and government forces in the Yemeni city of Aden, it has emerged today. The violence occurred during a demonstration organised by the political movement Harek, which called for widespread civil disobedience across the city on Saturday.
The news follows weeks of protests held in the south of the country by southern separatists, who are calling for the return of the independent state of South Yemen.
Formed in 1967, the communist state of South Yemen eventually merged with North Yemen in 1990 after the collapse of its main ally, the Soviet Union.
Herak and other southern separatist movements are calling for its reinstatement after complaining of widespread discrimination by the country’s government, including the dismissal of tens of thousands of administrators.
Yemen has struggled to restore normality since President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was elected in February 2012 following nearly a year of Arab Spring-style protests that forced his predecessor Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after 33 years in power.
Herak and the Socialist Party, led by former Yemeni vice president Ali Salem al-Beidh, have also warned opposition parties against participating in the country’s ongoing National Dialogue Conference (NDC), currently taking place in the capital Sanaa.
The UN- backed conference, which began on March 20 and is expected to go on for the next six months, brings together some 565 representatives of the country’s political parties, who are currently working on drafting a new constitution, preparing proposals on government decentralisation, and discussing the formation of a potential coalition government.
Speaking at the NDC on Saturday, President Hadi accused what he called “political camps” of trying to “sabotage” the peace talks.
Warning against the failure to achieve “solid” results at the conference, Hadi said: “If we do not achieve something, we will be hated by the public and thrown into the trashcan of history."
“The NDC is currently discussing ways of dealing with southern separatist demands, the Shiite rebellion in the north and transitional justice, as well as building a new state complete with a new constitution on the basis of which general elections should be held in February 2014,” he said.
The leader also highlighted changes in Aden’s security approach to ongoing protests, saying that riot police, armed with batons rather than rifles, have been trained to deal with the situation “more adequately.”
President Hadi also called on opposition parties participating in the NDC, to urge their supporters to “cooperate with the country’s security forces.”