CAIRO, Feb 13, (Agencies): Egypt’s new military regime dismantled ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak’s former regime on Sunday, dissolving parliament, suspending the constitution and promising a referendum on political reform. While the civilian cabinet met for the first time since Mubarak’s downfall, the generals made it clear where authority now lies, issuing a proclamation setting a six-month timetable to prepare democratic elections. The latest moves spelled the end of the political system that underpinned Mubarak’s 30-year rule which ended on Friday when he was driven from power after an 18-day pro-democracy uprising. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ “communique number five” said it would “run the affairs of the country on a temporary basis for six months or until the end of parliamentary and presidential elections.” The communique — read on state television — said the military would form a panel to rewrite the constitution, which effectively locked down power for Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), and submit it to a referendum.

The dissolved legislative body was seen as illegitimate following elections last year that were marred by widespread allegations of fraud and gave the NDP an overwhelming majority. The statement also confirmed that the chairman of the supreme military council, Mubarak’s defence minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, is now de facto head of state and represents Egypt on the international stage. The moves came as the famed Egyptian Museum announced that several priceless artefacts had been looted during the initial unrest sparked by the revolt and the widely hated police force marched in support of the uprising. Zahi Hawass, minister of state for antiquities, said that several ancient treasures had been stolen from the museum, including a statue of the renowned boy king Tutankhamun. The missing objects include “a gilded wood statue of the 18th Dynasty king Tutankhamun being carried by a goddess” and parts of another statue showing him harpooning, he said. Looters had broken into the museum off Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Jan 28, during clashes between protesters and riot police who used tear gas and water cannon to try to crush the revolt before being driven from the streets.

On Sunday, troops fired warning shots and scuffles broke out when policemen protested to restore their reputation and win pay rises after they found themselves on the wrong side of the uprising.
One policeman’s teeth were smashed in during the fight with soldiers outside the interior ministry, where around 1,500 members of the force called for the despised former interior minister Habib al-Adly to be publicly executed.
Troops had fired over the heads of the protesters, some of whom were in police uniform, as the crowd chanted at their former boss: “Habib, you know you will be executed in the public square!”
Egypt’s police are broadly despised and seen as brutal and corrupt, while the military has been embraced by the anti-regime protesters.
But the police protesting on Sunday insisted that had been ordered to deal harshly with the protests and were underpaid by their government masters.
Sunday’s cabinet meeting came a day after the resignation of the highly unpopular information minister Anas al-Fiki, who was allegedly behind a media campaign that presented protesters as foreign agents.
Fiki, Adly and sacked prime minister Ahmed Nazif have all been banned from leaving the country while they are investigated over graft allegations.

A judicial source told AFP on Sunday the prosecutor general would begin questioning Adly “within hours.”
The dissolution of Mubarak’s regime was reflected in the empty space outside the cabinet chamber where his portrait had hung for three decades.
Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq said, however, that Mubarak remained at his residence in the Sinai resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Mubarak appointed the cabinet — made up mostly of veteran military men — in the opening days of the revolt in a failed bid to appease the protesters.
Tantawi on Sunday met new Interior Minister Mahmud Wagdy, in order to get the police back on the streets as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, military police were directing cars through Tahrir Square, epicentre of the revolt.
Hundreds of thousands of people who had occupied the emblematic square had returned home by Sunday after a massive volunteer clean-up effort saw people from all walks of life sweeping the streets and collecting rubbish.
“All my dreams have come true,” said Nur Khersha, a 24-year-old student who slept in the square on Saturday night.
“Mubarak left. We will complete our cleaning, polish the stones, and then we will leave the square as clean as it was.”

Action
Britain urged the international community on Sunday to take “concerted” action to deal with any assets held abroad by ousted former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Business Secretary Vince Cable also warned that the British government would act against any British bank involved in helping Mubarak improperly move funds.
“I wasn’t aware that he (Mubarak) had enormous assets here but there clearly needs to be concerted international action on this,” Cable told the BBC.
“There is no point in one government acting in isolation but certainly we need to look at it. It depends also whether his funds were illegally obtained or improperly obtained.”
Cable added that he would be “concerned if the banks had been enaged in anything improper” in relation to funds held by Mubarak, who stepped down on Friday after weeks of protests.
The head of Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, Richard Alderman, indicated separately that the authorities were already tracking the assets of Mubarak and of former Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted last month.
“The public would expect us to be looking for some of this money if we became aware of it, and to try to repatriate it for the benefit of the people of those countries,” Alderman told The Sunday Times.
Switzerland on Friday ordered a freeze on any assets belonging to Mubarak and his entourage, although it was not immediately clear if any such assets had been located in the country.
A similar freeze on Ben Ali’s assets last month resulted in the blockage of a sum in the “two-digit millions” in Switzerland pending legal action for its recovery by Tunisian authorities, officials said.

Pivotal
The fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak could be a pivotal moment in the spread of democracy across the Middle East, peace envoy and former British prime minister Tony Blair said Sunday.
But he warned that the West had to engage with both protesters and governments in the region to ensure that it capitalises on a “moment of excitement but uncertainty.”
“This is a moment where the whole of the Middle East could pivot and face towards modernisation and democracy and that would be a huge benefit for all of us,” Blair told the BBC.
“We should have a strategy of engagement with the democratic, modernising forces across the region. We should be helping countries evolve and move in the direction of change.”
Blair said that a “benign” new administration in Egypt could unblock the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, especially if it helps modernising elements in the Palestinian Authority.
He warned, however, that the region could “either go towards an open-minded, modern type of democracy, let’s hope that it does, or it could be swung into something narrow and extreme and closed-minded.
“I think there’s every possibility that we get the first and not the second and our purpose as the West should be to engage insofar as possible to bring about that more benign scenario,” he added.
The ex-premier also defended Mubarak, who stood down on Friday after weeks of protests against his authoritarian three-decade rule, as a stabilising force.
“You can’t invite him to the White House five months ago, and I was there with President (Barack) Obama, as a partner in peace and them simply forget all that,” he added.

Hijack
The United States is trying to hijack the Egyptian revolution and “nip it in the bud” to meet Israeli agendas, Ali Larijani, speaker of Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament, said Sunday.
“The statesmen of this country aim to seize the revolution of the Egyptians and nip it in the bud,” Larijani said, referring to Iran’s arch-foe the United States, state news agency IRNA reported.
Larijani, who has repeatedly lashed out at Washington since the fall on Friday of US ally Hosni Mubarak, said the ouster of the Egyptian strongman was the “first phase of the spring of the victory of the Egyptian revolution.”
“But before and after this victory, we have witnessed American conspiracies by which they (Americans) want to somehow seize the victory of the Egyptians,” he said.
Larijani accused the United States of working to meet demands of the Israelis.

“The Americans trampled the national dignity of Egypt, which is a great and educated country, by its cooperation with the Zionist regime,” Larijani said in parliament.
“They now cheekily say that future democratic conditions in Egypt should respect the shameful Camp David treaty.
“What kind of democracy is this which is shaped within an illegal military council by American orders?” he said, referring to the treaty negotiated in 1978 at Camp David between Egypt and Israel and signed the following year.
A junta of senior military commanders which took charge of Egypt following the fall of Mubarak said it would respect the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.
Fresh squabbling between Washington and Tehran has broken out since Mubarak was overthrown Friday after an 18-day popular uprising, with officials from both countries lashing out at each other.

Celebration
The celebration of the toppling of Hosni Mubarak extended into Saturday in Washington, but the mood turned toward the serious business of building a democracy in Egypt.
About 50 people held signs and chanted human rights slogans outside the White House on Saturday, a day after dozens of Egyptians danced outside the Egyptian embassy.
“All those people who went to the protest, for the love of Egypt and for the love of the people, care and protect Egypt from any internal or external dividing that may happen,” said 32-year-old Egyptian Hala Mousa.
“We don’t want any division to happen,” she added. “I see people cleaning the streets. People are giving food to everybody. That’s a great start but what’s most important is we care for what is going to happen in the future and the law.”
The 18-day revolution unfolded so quickly that demonstration planners had little time to react.
Amnesty International organized Saturday’s “global day of action,” to show solidarity with Egyptians demanding “an end to 30 years of repressive government.”
So the rally outside the White House focused mainly on human rights. Activists held signs that read “Release prisoners of conscience,” among others.
Other rallies were planned in New York, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco.

Atef Abouhamda, a 52-year-old Egyptian who teaches Arabic in suburban Virginia, said the hard work begins now.
“Right now everything is under military control, and we hope for not too long,” he said. “A civilian government can be organized so we don’t make the same mistake that has happened in the past.”
He offered a message to the protesters in Egypt: “Congratulations for your revolution. Keep the revolution alive until you reach your goal, which is democratic government in Egypt.”
In New York, 200 American Egyptians celebrated in a park near the United Nations, dancing, chanting and enjoying an over-sized cake inscribed in Arabic with, “Congratulations to the heroes of Egypt.”
The crowd waved signs capturing the historic moment in their distant homeland, including an old “Mubarak Regime Must Go” placard crossed out to read: “Gone.”
Nearby, several dozen people attended an Amnesty International gathering where placards urged peace in Egypt. “No more bloodshed,” one read.

Contact
Israel and Egypt’s new military rulers have made initial contact and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday welcomed their pledge to stand by Cairo’s peace treaty with the Jewish state. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of Egypt’s Higher Military Council, spoke by telephone on Saturday, a ministry spokeswoman said, declining to give further details.
In remarks to reporters that echoed a written statement issued on Saturday, Netanyahu voiced satisfaction that Egypt’s military leadership had announced it would respect all the country’s international treaties.
“The peace agreement was kept by Egypt throughout the years ... it is the cornerstone of peace and stability, not only for the two countries, but for the whole region as well,” Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
Saturday’s message from Egypt’s military leaders appeared to be aimed at soothing concern in Israel and the United States about the US-brokered pact that ended three decades of hostilities.
Many analysts foresee a more testy and uncomfortable relationship in the years ahead. Netanyahu cautioned last week an Iranian-style Islamist revolution could take place in Egypt should Mubarak’s Muslim Brotherhood rivals eventually take over.
In an editorial, Israel’s left-wing newspaper Haaretz said that while “the dramatic change across the border naturally gives rise to fears”, Netanyahu’s warnings that Egypt “could turn into a new Iran ... merely create destructive tension”.
“The revolution in Egypt did not stem from the ties with Israel, and Netanyahu would do well to keep quiet and give this neighbouring country a chance to establish a democracy,” it said.

Uprising
Within less than a month, popular uprisings toppled the long-time presidents of Egypt and Tunisia, and revolts could spread to other Arab countries if they do not implement reforms quickly, analysts say.
“The Arab leaders are in a race against time: either they quickly adopt liberal changes, or they suffer the same fate as (the leaders) of Tunisia and Egypt,” said Anwar Eshki, the director of the Middle East Institute for Strategic Studies in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, who resigned on Friday after being in power since 1981, and Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who departed after ruling for 23 years on January 14, both bowed to unprecedented waves of popular protests.
Angered by injustice, unemployment and corruption, “the Arab citizen is not the same as he was two months ago” and “has proven he can bring down an Arab head of state after two or three weeks of demonstrations,” said Paul Salem, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Centre.
Various Arab leaders, some of whom, such as Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, have been in power for over 40 years while many of those who have ruled with an iron fist have suddenly announced social security measures and political reforms.
The popular uprisings in those two countries “will have repercussions throughout the region” and the United States, which encouraged change in Tunisia and Egypt, will try to do the same in other Arab countries, said Saleh al-Qallab, a former Jordanian information minister.

“Who is next? No one can predict,” he said, adding that this excludes Saudi Arabia, a rich oil state governed by the ultra-conservative Wahhabism doctrine, where “the process of reforms initiated by King Abdullah is moving slowly due to the weight of tradition and religion.”
Eshki echoed that assessment, saying that “the United States will seek to avoid sudden change in the Gulf states that could disrupt oil supplies to the world economy,” but Washington “will advise them to engage in reforms and accelerate their implementation.”
But he added that “the winds of change will blow on these (Gulf) countries. And if the leaders do not take the initiative, their people will.”
The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which were initiated and led by young people using the social networking site Facebook and micro-blogging site Twitter, have showed the limits of Islamist activism, which Arab regimes have used as a scarecrow to ward off calls for reform, Salem said.
“Without adhering to an ideology,” the uprisings have succeeded where Islamist movements have failed for decades, during which “they were presented or presented themselves as the only alternative to repressive Arab regimes,” he said.
Salem added however that Mubarak’s fall, in the eyes of Riyadh, “exacerbates the imbalance of power in the favour of Iran,” which wants “an Islamic Middle East,” and sees the departure of the Egyptian president as “the failure of the United States and Zionism in the region.”
“The alliance of the Arab countries and the United States will weaken in favour of a degree of autonomy on the Turkish model, but these countries have no choice but to remain in the American fold,” Salem said.

Bahrain
Bahrain’s security forces set up checkpoints and fanned out on patrols Sunday as opposition groups blanketed social media sites with calls to stage the first major anti-government protests in the Gulf since the uprising in Egypt.
The wide-ranging clampdown appeared directed toward Bahrain’s Shiite majority — which had led the drive for Monday’s rallies — and reflected the increasing worries of the Sunni rulers who have already doled out cash and promised greater media reforms in an effort to quell the protest fervor.
A prominent human rights activist predicted “chaos and bloodshed” if attempts are made to crush the planned demonstrations.
The tiny kingdom of Bahrain is among the most politically volatile in the Gulf and holds important strategic value for the West as the home as the US Navy’s 5th Fleet. Bahrain’s Shiites — accounting for nearly 70 percent of the population — have long complained of systematic discrimination by the ruling Sunni dynasty, whose crackdown on dissent last year touched off riots and clashes.
Shiite-led opposition groups and others have joined calls for the demonstrations on a symbolic day — the anniversary of Bahrain’s 2002 constitution that brought some pro-democracy reforms such as an elected parliament.

Security forces set up checkpoints around Shiite villages and throughout the capital Manama to monitor movements. Units also patrolled malls and other key spots in a clear warning against holding the rallies, which have been the focus of social media appeals and text messages for more than a week.
One cartoon posted on a Bahraini blog showed three arms holding aloft a mobile phone and the symbols of Facebook and Twitter.
Bahrain’s leaders, meanwhile, have stepped in with concessions to try to defuse the protests.
Government media monitors began talks Sunday with newspaper publishers and others to draft new rules to limit state controls. The official Bahrain News Agency, meanwhile, launched a new multimedia service that includes social media applications to seek more outreach.
It’s unclear, however, whether activists and rights groups will be satisfied with the proposed changes after facing widespread blocks on websites and blogs.
Last week, Bahrain’s king, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, granted each Bahraini family the equivalent of nearly $2,700 in an apparent bid to calm tensions.
But the demands go deeper than economics.
In an open letter to the king, the independent Bahrain Center for Human Rights called for wide-ranging reforms to avoid a “worst-case scenario,” including dismantling the security forces, prosecution of state officials for abuses and the release of 450 jailed activists, religious leaders and others.

The rights center’s president, Nabeel Rajab, urged the king to “avoid the fatal mistake committed by similar regimes in Tunisia and Egypt” and not try to crush planned protests Monday. He warned further pressures by authorities could push the country into “chaos or bloodshed.”
On Friday, hundreds of Bahrainis and Egyptian nationals went out in the streets chanting and dancing near the Egyptian Embassy in Manama moments after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as president. Bahraini authorities quickly set up roadblocks to contain the crowds.
The chances for confrontation in Bahrain have been further elevated by the ongoing trial of 25 Shiite activists — including two charged in absentia — accused of plotting against the state. The detainees have alleged police torture and being made to sign forced confessions, but the court has moved ahead with the proceedings. The next session is scheduled for Feb 24.
Bahrain’s Al-Wasat newspaper reported Sunday that one of the suspects had a heart attack while in custody and was hospitalized.
Opposition groups in Kuwait had called for an anti-government protests last week, but shifted the date to March 8 after the resignation of the country’s scandal-tainted interior minister.

Iran
Iran’s opposition on Sunday renewed its call for a rally in support of protesters in Tunisia and Egypt despite a government warning of repercussions if demonstrations take place, a reformist website reported.
In a statement published on Kaleme.com, the opposition urged its supporters to rally on Monday in central Tehran and accused the government of hypocrisy by voicing support for the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings while refusing to allow Iranian political activists to stage a peaceful demonstration.
Wary of a reinvigorated opposition at home, Iranian authorities have detained several activists and journalists in recent weeks and opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi was put under house arrest, apparently in connection with the request to stage the rally.
The statement said further restrictions on Karroubi and fellow opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi were a sign of the “increasing weakness and fear of the government about the most peaceful civil and political rights” of Iranians.

In another report, Kaleme said many university students as well as a reformist cleric group have promised to attend the rally. But it was not clear whether the rally would actually take place. Many opposition calls for demonstrations in the past months have gone unheeded.
Still, the opposition’s persistence has placed the government in a bind. Iran’s hard-line rulers — who have also tried to capitalize on the uprising against their regional rivals in Egypt’s U.S.-allied regime — are seeking to deprive their own opponents at home of any chance to reinvigorate a movement swept from the streets in a heavy military crackdown.
Both Mousavi and Karroubi have compared the unrest in Egypt and Tunisia with their own postelection protest movement in 2009, which the Iranian government eventually managed to quash. Mousavi said Iran’s demonstrations were the starting point for the recent revolts in Cairo and Tunis, and that all the uprisings aimed at ending the “oppression of the rulers.”

The protests that swept Iran in the months after the 2009 vote grew into a larger movement opposed to Iran’s ruling system. It was the biggest challenge faced by Iran’s clerical leadership since it came to power in the 1979 revolution that toppled the US-backed shah.
Hundreds of thousands peacefully took to the streets in support of Mousavi, and some powerful clerics sided with the opposition.
However a heavy military crackdown suppressed the protests, and many in the opposition — from midlevel political figures to street activists, journalists and human rights workers — were arrested. The opposition has not been able to hold a major protest since December 2009.
A senior White House official on Saturday criticized Iran’s refusal to let opponents of the regime hold a rally in support of Arab uprisings.
“By announcing that they will not allow opposition protests, the Iranian government has declared illegal for Iranians what it claimed was noble for Egyptians,” National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said in a statement.

“We call on the government of Iran to allow the Iranian people the universal right to peacefully assemble, demonstrate and communicate that’s being exercised in Cairo,” he added.
Iran’s Islamic government said the proposed rally is a ploy for fresh anti-government protests, similar to those in 2009 following the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It described the request for the rally as “illegal.”
But the day before, Ahmadinejad himself said it was the “right” of Egyptians to protest against US ally Hosni Mubarak, just hours before the Egyptian strongman stepped down.
Western spies are seeking someone with impaired mental faculties to immolate himself and ignite an uprising in Iran as occurred in Arab nations, the head of the country’s powerful militia said Sunday.
Commander Mohammad Reza Naghdi, who heads Iran’s feared Basij militia made up of hundreds of thousands of volunteers, said Western intelligence agencies want to trigger events in Iran similar to those in Egypt and Tunisia.

“Western intelligence agencies are searching for a mentally challenged person who can set himself on fire in Tehran to trigger developments like those in Egypt and Tunisia,” Naghdi was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.
“They (the West) are very retarded and think by imitating such actions they can emerge victorious.”
Naghdi’s remarks come as Iran’s opposition leaders seek to hold a rally on Monday in support of Arab uprisings but which regime backers believe is a ploy to stage fresh anti-government demonstrations.
The uprising in Tunisia which led to the fall of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was triggered by the self-immolation in December of a young student.
Copycat self-immolation bids ocurred in Egypt in the days leading up to Jan 25, when protesters first took to the streets of Cairo to demand the ouster of strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Algeria
Algeria’s increasingly vociferous opposition movement was Sunday planning its next move after defying a government ban to hold a rare rally in the capital Algiers and other cities the day before.
The authorities deployed around 30,000 riot police across Algiers to smother the demonstration by about 2,000 protesters, anxious to stop a wave of popular opposition inspired by events in Egypt and Tunisia.
The pro-reform daily Liberte on Sunday described the rally as historic despite its small size, topping its coverage with the headlined: “Change is on its way”.
The Government daily El Moudjahid reported on the rally on its front page, but dismissed the opposition demonstration was only a “weak echo” of events in Egypt and Tunisia.
However, Fodil Boumala, one of the founders of the National Coordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD), which organised the march, was jubilant.
“This is just the beginning,” he said.
On Saturday, Boumala said the demonstrators had “broken the wall of fear” in the capital. “The Algerians have won back their capital.”

Public demonstrations have been banned in Algeria under a state of emergency put in place in 1992.
The national union of journalists condemned what it said was a violent crackdown on journalists covering the demonstrations.
The SNJ union “condemns in the strongest possible manner the repression of journalists and photographers covering the opposition demonstrations on Saturday in Algiers and other towns across the country.”
Several journalists were “violently attacked by police, who were particularly quick to use the baton.”
“Some of them were among the hundreds of people arrested and taken to police stations where they were held for hours,” it said.
Scuffles between the security forces and protesters broke out even before the march began at 11:00 am (1000 GMT), and there were many arrests, witnesses said.
The interior ministry said 14 people had been held and then released.

But the head of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH), Mustapha Bouchachi, said there had been 300 arrests in Algiers, the western city of Oran and the eastern city of Annaba.
Authorities said all those arrested have been released.
Demonstrators waved a large banner declaring “Regime, out” and chanted slogans borrowed from the mass protests in Tunis and Cairo.
Riot police, some of whom carried automatic weapons as well as batons and shields, blocked them from undertaking the planned four-kilometre (two-and-a-half mile) march through the city centre from May 1 Square to Martyrs Square.
In the main western city of Oran, between 400 and 500 protestors also rallied Saturday for a demonstration which the opposition said had been banned by the authorities.
The authorities arrested around 30 people, witnesses said.
The CNCD, an umbrella group of opposition parties, civil society movements and unofficial unions including the RCD and the LADDH, was set up only three weeks ago, emboldened by the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt.

The CNCD is demanding the immediate end of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s regime, citing the same problems of high unemployment, housing and soaring costs that inspired uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
The grievances triggered riots in early January that left five dead and more than 800 injured.
A protest called by the RCD in Algiers on Jan 22 left many injured as police blocked a march on parliament.
Like their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt, the protesters have used Facebook and text messages to spread their call for change.
Bouteflika, in power since 1999, has acted to curb price rises and promised political concessions, including pledging to lift a two-decade state of emergency, which the opposition says do not go far enough.
The 74-year-old leader was re-elected in 2004 and again in 2009 after revising the constitution to allow for an indefinite number of terms.

Yemen
Yemeni police armed with sticks and daggers beat back thousands of protesters marching through the capital in a third straight day of demonstrations calling for political reforms and the resignation of the country’s US-allied president.
The protests have mushroomed since crowds gathered Friday to celebrate the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after an 18-day revolt fueled by similar grievances. Yemen is one of several countries in the Middle East feeling the aftershocks, as pro-reform demonstrators take inspiration from the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
Much is at stake in Yemen — already a deeply troubled nation — if the pressure on President Ali Abdullah Saleh further erodes stability.
The US is most worried about an al-Qaida offshoot that has taken root in Yemen’s mountains in the last few years and used the haven as a base to plot attacks beyond the country’s borders, including the failed attempt to blow up a US-bound airliner in December 2009 by an attacker with a bomb sewn into his underwear.
Saleh — in power for three decades — is quietly cooperating with the US in efforts to battle the al-Qaida franchise, but his government exercises limited control in the tribal areas beyond the capital. The US is funneling him military aid and training.

The country’s security forces, however, are already stretched thin on two other fronts: Since 2004, they have struggled to contain a serious rebellion in the north by members of the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam who complain of neglect and discrimination. At the same time, police and army forces are clashing with a secessionist movement in southern Yemen, which was a separate country until 1990.
Now, the protests calling for the president’s ouster over corruption allegations and other complaints are adding another serious challenge to the list.
Saleh has tried to defuse the unrest by promising not to run again when his term ends in 2013 and guaranteeing that he will not seek to pass power to his son.
On Sunday, uniformed police used truncheons to stop protesters, many of them university students, from reaching the capital’s central Hada Square. Witnesses said plainclothes policemen wielding daggers and sticks also joined security forces in driving the protesters back.

Several people were injured and police detained 23 protesters, witnesses said.
The crowds took up the protest cry that became famous in Tunisia and then in Egypt, shouting, “The people want to overthrow the regime.”
They have also tried to reach a square in the capital with the same name as the plaza that became the epicenter of Egypt’s protest movement: Tahrir, or Liberation, Square.
Seeking to stop them, the police have ringed the square with barbed wire and bussed in government supporters to set up a tent camp and occupy and defend the square around the clock.
On Sunday, local officials gave police and government supporters free portions of the leafy narcotic qat, which many Yemenis chew throughout the day, witnesses said.
Yemen is the Arab world’s most impoverished nation. Its main source of income — oil — could run dry in a decade,