Yemen’s saleh ready to start anew with saudi coalition

ADEN: Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Saturday he was ready for a “new page” with the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen if it stopped attacks on his country. The call came as his supporters battled Houthi fighters for a fourth day in the capital Sanaa as the two sides traded blame for a rift between allies that could affect the course of the civil war. Together they have fought the Saudi-led coalition which intervened in Yemen in 2015 aiming to restore the internationally recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthis forced him into exile. The clash between Saleh’s supporters and the Houthis underscores the complex situation in Yemen. “I call upon the brothers in neighbouring states and the alliance to stop their aggression, lift the siege, open the airports and allow food aid and the saving of the wounded and we will turn a new page by virtue of our neighbourliness,” Saleh said in a televised speech. “We will deal with them in a positive way and what happened to Yemen is enough,” he added. Saleh stepped down after 33 years in office in 2012, following months of Arab Spring protests against his rule, but remained leader of the GPC, the country’s largest political party. The Saudi-led coalition welcomed Saleh’s remarks. The coalition says Saleh betrayed Arabs by joining Houthi-led forces who they say are aligned with nonArab Iran. The leader of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) said on Friday he ruled out no option for forming a new government but stressed that a re-run of the outgoing “grand coalition” with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives was not a done deal.

Germany, Europe’s political and economic powerhouse, has been struggling to build a new government since a 24 September national election. Merkel’s conservative bloc and the SPD lost support in that vote, while an anti- immigrant party surged into parliament, seriously complicating the coalition arithmetic. Merkel, her own political future on the line after 12 years at the helm, is making overtures to the center-left SPD—her partner in government over the past four years— after her bid to form a three-way coalition with two smaller parties failed. The SPD, which had wanted to go into opposition to rebuild after suffering its worst post-World War Two election result, fears its distinctive identity and policy ideas will again be smothered in any tie-up with Merkel’s bigger center- right bloc. “Regarding the formation of a new government, there was broad support for not ruling any option out,” SPD leader Martin Schulz said after party board discussions in Berlin.

Schulz, who held talks late