A political deal for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to relinquish power within 30 days failed to persuade thousands of anti-government protesters spread across the nation Sunday to reel in their banners, fold up their camps and go home.
A tentative agreement reached a day earlier between leading political opponents and Saleh’s ruling party called for the president to step down within 30 days in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Diplomats credited the plan as a move toward ending two months of turmoil and bloodshed, but the deal fell short of the central demand by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators that Saleh resign immediately.
SYRIA: Security forces adopt pinpoint strategy.
Syrian security forces detained dozens of opposition activists and fired from rooftops in a seaside town Sunday as authorities turned to pinpoint raids after days of bloodshed brought international condemnation and defections from President Bashar Assad’s regime.
The strategy, described by a rights activist, appeared aimed at rattling the opposition’s leadership and showing that the state’s ability to conduct arrest sweeps has not changed despite abolishing nearly 50-year-old emergency laws last week.
The rising level of violence — more than 120 people dead since Friday — brought calls from the watchdog group Human Rights Watch for a U.N. inquiry. But Sunday’s tactics also suggest a government effort to head off the round of protest marches.
LIBYA: Rebels preserve oil as supplies dwindle.
Libyan rebels fighting Moammar Khadafy won’t be able to produce more crude oil for at least another four weeks and are taking steps to conserve precious supplies of fuel and money, the top oil official in the breakaway east said Sunday.
The rebels need to repair equipment to pump oil from two key fields in the rebel-controlled east, Messla and Sarir, that were damaged in fighting, said Wahid Bughaigis, who serves as oil minister for the rebels.
EGYPT: Mubarak moving to military medical facility.
Egypt’s prosecutor general ordered Sunday that former president Hosni Mubarak be transferred from his hospital in a Red Sea resort town to a military medical facility, according to his website.
Mubarak was originally supposed to be moved to Cairo’s Tora prison hospital, but it was deemed not yet ready to receive him, said a spokesman for Prosecutor General Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud.
Mubarak was hospitalized with heart problems after he and his sons were ordered into custody April 13.
MOROCCO: Thousands march for political reforms.
Several thousand protesters have staged protests in cities across Morocco to demand more political changes.
A participant said that a group of fewer than 5,000 protesters organized a march through a working- class neighborhood of the capital Rabat to call for constitutional reforms and new parliamentary elections.
The state news agency MAP said about 4,500 demonstrators also marched in Casablanca.
The protests were organized by the February 20 movement, which has led protests for the past two months, with support from Morocco’s best-known Islamist movement, Adl wal Ihsan, which is barred from politics in the kingdom.
King Mohammed VI has pledged changes to the constitution for the first time in 15 years, amid a push for greater democracy across the Arab world.
