SANAA, 17 May 2004 — President Ali Abdullah Saleh will not attend the Arab summit in Tunis, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Kurbi told AFP yesterday.
“President Saleh will not be present at the summit in Tunis which coincides with celebrations to mark the 14th annniversary of the reunification of Yemen,” he said.
Saleh is the first Arab leader to announce he will not travel to Tunis for the May 22-23 gathering which has already been postponed once over differences on reform in the Arab world.
Kurbi said Sanaa had requested that the summit opening be delayed by a day to allow for Yemen’s festivities to mark the May 22, 1990 unity deal between the former Marxist south and the north led by Saleh.
The summit is expected to produce a “strategic declaration” confirming the need to promote social and political reforms in the Arab world.
Four Killed in Tribal Clash
A bid to settle a dispute between two tribes over a farm plot ended in an armed battle that left four men dead and six wounded in Yemen’s Ibb province, tribal sources said yesterday.
Shooting erupted Saturday and four local dignitaries who had agreed to try to reconcile the Al-Mehdi and Al-Jomaa tribes died in a hail of bullets, the sources said.
The wounded were from both tribes who clashed at a village nearly 200 kilometers south of the capital Sanaa. Security forces were hunting the gunmen, the sources added.
In Yemen’s tribal society, firefights are frequent with the number of guns held by civilians officially estimated at more than 60 million, or more than three per inhabitant.
