Yemen President authorized vice president Hadi to sign GCC pact

One day after the meeting of the GCC foreign ministers, President Ali Abdullah Saleh authorized his Vice President Abdu Rabo Mansour Hadi  to sign the GCC  pact for ending the political crisis in Yemen.  A republican decree was issued on Monday to authorize Vice president Hadi to negotiate with the opposition parties and to sign the deal and a timetable for implementing it.

"We decided to authorize Vice President Abd-Rabo Mansour Hadi with necessary constitutional authority to sign the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative,"  stated the republican decree.

"Hadi's signature to the GCC initiative should be done after he launches a dialogue with the opposition parties that signed the initiative to set up an agreed timetable and mechanism to implement the power-transfer pact," the decree said.

The decree also stressed that the implementation of the GCC initiative should be carried out under the supervision of the regional and international community, in order to remove the political and security tension and to ensure the arrangement for holding early presidential elections that guarantee a peaceful and democratic power transition.

Saleh's decision came one day after the meeting of the GCC foreign ministers in Jeddah and 3 days after he had met on Thursday in Riyadh with the legal team of the GPC party, which proposed a timetable of 90 days for him to resign based on the GCC deal.

The GCC leaders held a meeting late Sunday in Jeddah port of Saudi Arabia and urged all rival parties in Yemen to avoid violence and to solve their problems peacefully. Also the Secretary General of the GCC Khalil al-Zyani said that the GCC initiative between Saleh and the opposition is still valid and called the rivals to hold dialogue to avoid  bloodshed in the country.