SANA, Yemen — As anti-government demonstrators planned a new round of rallies today, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was engaged in serious negotiations over the timing and conditions for the end of his 32-year rule, Yemeni and U.S. officials said Thursday.
But they cautioned that no deal had been reached. Saleh struck a defiant pose in a television appearance, speaking scornfully of protesters while offering amnesty to military defectors if they return to the government’s side.
Nonetheless, the 4-week-old protest movement appeared to be gaining momentum with the defections in the past week of a host of high-level government officials, including senior military commanders and ambassadors, and the protesters’ rejection of Saleh’s latest offer, to leave office by the end of the year.
