Reports say 13 protesters have been injured after government thugs attacked the protesters in the southwestern city of Taizz.
The protests began after the Friday prayers in the main squares of the capital Sana'a and Taizz. In Taizz, the Friday prayers Imaam ruled out any agreement between the protesters and the government.
Meanwhile, Saleh has told his supporters that he is the country's legitimate leader under the constitution.
On Thursday, Yemeni tribal leaders and clerics urged Saleh to leave his post. Yemen's opposition has set a two-week deadline for the president to step down.
Press TV interviews Jeff Steinberg, editor of the Executive Intelligence Review in Washington.
Press TV:The role of foreign players that are playing here, as far as the Yemeni uprising and the revolution goes, we have seen the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council urge Saleh to step down proposing a mediation between the opposition and Saleh's regime; where on the other hand we are seeing the same institution suppress protests in Bahrain. Why are we seeing these double standards?
Jeff Steinberg:What you have got first of all the dominant course of Cooperation Council of Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia wants to stop the clock on any further reforms in the Sunni Arab world; that's the policy coming out of the Saudi Royal family.
They have recently been putting tremendous pressure on King Abdullah II of Jordan, not to establish a constitutional monarchy knowing it would set a president that would put pressure on Saudi Arabia to follow suit.
And I think the main difference between Bahrain and Yemen is that they have just simply had to acknowledge the fact that after the slaughtering of demonstrators in front of international news cameras and things like that in Yemen several weeks back, that really was a point of departure and since that point the head of the armed forces, the head of the tribe that President Saleh is a part of, they walk on over to the opposition.
And so in the case of the Yemen situation, I think the best outpoint from the Saudis trying to stop major reform in the region is for there to be an engineered departure of Saleh while much of the apparatuses, vice presidents and probably several of his sons, will remain in permanent positions within the military so in Yemen that's the best and most stable and least reformat outcome that they can get and they are trying for a bit more in the Bahrain situation.
They think that they basically have helped and there have been foreign troops brought in and a lot of Pakistanis are brought in on the Saudi pay roll as basically [P]GCC operatives and security mercenaries and the reports that I get from the ground is that the Shia neighborhoods in Bahrain people are being continuously rounded up, brought in, interrogated and tortured.
So the difference is really in what the traffic will allow but the common feature of both Bahrain and Yemen situation is that the Saudis very much wish to see the status defended as much as possible and they are smart enough to realize that the status in Yemen will necessarily involve President Saleh's departure but keeping most every other element of the structures of government there intact.
Press TV:Is this something that the people are going to swallow, we have seen it happen in Egypt, we have seen it happen in Tunisia, where after the departure of the dictator, the face of the regime, people have continued to protest and demand for true reforms, are Yemenis going to follow the same track or are they going to quiet down once the face of this regime President Saleh is changed?
Jeff Steinberg:I think that you are absolutely right I don't think that this is a movement that is going to take a compromise gesture, really a cosmetic gesture of the departure of President Saleh but the maintaining of power of the same exact structure as an acceptable outcome. I think you have in the Egypt situation clearly the most developed and advanced civil society of any of the countries that are presently in vulnerable so it may go differently in terms of how long it's going to take. But in each of these cases the population is not going to be willing to settle for some mere symbolic or cosmetic change they want something real.
They have very serious economic issues. In all of these cases young people are playing a dominant role because they come to the point of concluding that they have no future under the current system.
So they are not going to take this lying down, you had massacres in Bahrain, serious massacres in Yemen, you had massacres in Libya, police, interior ministry riot in Cairo and in only further if you will the commitment of the demonstrators.
The chains of fear have been broken across the board, and I really don't see the approach being taken by the Saudis and the [P]GCC as very likely to succeed. You could get a wild kind of response if there are no real solutions provided but the case in my view is absolutely that the popular demonstrations will not stop on the basis of simply President Saleh departing from Sana'a and being replaced by somebody else in the same political circles.
Press TV:What does this say about any future post of Saleh Yemen, I mean let's take a look at Egypt where there was a viable military institution that took over to bring about stability as well as a viable opposition force there which continuously worked for the interest of people as they see it but what about in Yemen we do not see that institution as far as the military goes and also its opposition people are getting tired of the continuous bickering between the government and the opposition and they just want things to end there.
Jeff Steinberg:Well I think you are absolutely right that the outcome is not predictable. It's not a one side revolution going on from country to country and I think the answer to your question has not yet been written.
There are clearly many young people, many university students who are playing an absolutely central role in the demonstrations today with the largest demonstrations yet; one and a half million people in one of the cities of southwest of Yemen, hundreds of thousands in the capital city of Sana'a.
So I think it's a working progress, even in the case of Egypt, the young people who have been the back bone of the revolution and have turned out week after week. Millions in Tahrir Square in Cairo are in the process of formulating political institutions developing a policy in the case of Egypt.
There were economic developments plans on the drawing board in the 1980's; there were plans to build foreign nuclear power plants, major irrigation fresh water projects to green the western desert of Egypt. Those ideas have all been basically taken back out and are being widely discussed in debated as the platforms of the new political parties so one will hope that similar kinds of things will happen in Yemen they'll take the example of what's going on in Egypt and other places.
There was a recent conference in Doha in which leaders of these various youth revolutions were all invited and they had a chance to interact and to establish contact with one another so since Egypt is the most advanced situation, one would hope that they would have some direct input and work with their friends and colleagues in places like Yemen and elsewhere and come up with some viable strategies for the future, really they want a better economy. They want an end to police state, they want representatives, political institutions and each country has somewhat a unique history so we will see how it all works out. The answer is not yet written.
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