Yemen's Saleh welcomes UN resolution on power shift

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, facing an increasingly entrenched uprising against his rule, on Monday welcomed a U.N. Security Council resolution urging him to adopt a Gulf-mediated plan for him to transfer power, the state news agency reported.     

Saleh has rejected three times so far the plan proposed by neighboring Gulf Arab states, which calls for a transition to early parliamentary and presidential elections after Saleh forms a new opposition-led cabinet and relinquishes the presidency.    

"The Yemeni president... expressed his readiness to sit down immediately at the dialogue table with the Joint Meeting Parties (opposition parties) and its partners to complete the dialogue over the operational mechanism for the (Gulf) initiative as quickly as possible and to reach the final signing of the initiative and its immediate implementation, leading to early presidential elections on a date agreed upon by all," the Yemeni news agency SABA said.    

This was Saleh's first response since the United Nations Security Council last week called on Saleh to adopt the plan.    

Ruling Yemen since 1978 through a civil war and rebel movements, Saleh has clung on to power despite an assassination attempt that send him abroad for three months for medical treatment, defecting generals and nine months of street protests.

-Reuters