A solution to Yemen's 10-month long political crisis is just around the corner, predicts Nasser Arrabyee The compromise solution now on the table would leave President Ali Abdullah Saleh with symbolic powers until a new president is elected in late February or early March 2012. Almost all presidential powers will be in the hand of Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, the man who has at least some claim to a national consensus to run the country during the expected 3-6 month transition period. Earlier this week, President Saleh welcomed a UN Security Council urging him to transfer power according to a deal brokered by the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and supported by the international community. The UN resolution equally urged all armed conflicting parties to stop warring and return to dialogue for political solution. According to reliable sources close to both President Saleh and the opposition, all parties have agreed on a mechanism to implement the GCC deal in a way that equally satisfies almost all parties. President Saleh is expected to announce this week a new authorisation for his deputy Hadi to issue republican decrees for implementing the GCC deal. This authorisation will mean that Saleh will stay until a new president is elected and Hadi will run all public affairs during the transitional period. This will solve the two most complicated issues that were always behind the failure of negotiations and dialogue between Saleh and the Islamist-led opposition forces. The negotiators had agreed on 85 per cent of the issues by 23 September, when President Saleh returned from Saudi Arabia where he had spent three months for treatment of injuries he suffered from a failed assassination attempt. The remaining problems were first, that Saleh does not want to resign before early presidential elections. The opposition wants him to resign first. The second issue is, once the two sides agreed on conducting elections, whether the son and nephews of Saleh, who now lead the army and security, would remain in their positions before and during the elections. Now it seems that these two issues will be solved. Hadi will entrust a man from the opposition to form a national unity government shared 50-50 by Saleh's ruling party and the opposition coalition. The members of the new opposition-chaired government will take the constitutional oath before the authorised vice president Hadi. Taking the oath before Saleh was one of the points that some of the opposition leaders refused in the past. The symbolic President Saleh will then call for presidential elections in which, of course, he is not going to stand as his current constitutional term is the last. Saleh's son Ahmed, who heads the republican guards, and his three nephews Yehia, Ammar and Tarek, who are in charge of the central security, national security, and special guards respectively, will remain in their positions until a new president is elected. The big concern of the opposition about holding presidential elections, with the army and security still controlled by Saleh, will be removed by forming a military and security committee chaired by Hadi. The army and security will be under the control of this committee in which the opposition forces will be represented. The ambassadors of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, EU, and GCC were briefed on this new mechanism of implementing the GCC deal by the Yemeni government on Monday. Political advisor to President Saleh Abdel-Karim Al-Eryani, who briefed the diplomats on the new solution of the 10-month long political crisis in Yemen, said, "We are very interested in finding a political solution with the opposition based on the GCC deal and the UN Security Council resolution." UN envoy to Yemen Jamal Bin Omar and GCC chief negotiator Abdel-Latif Al-Zayani are expected to return to Yemen next week to monitor the implementation of the GCC deal with the new mechanism.
