Doesn't wanna go

Laura Kasinof has an article in The New York Times about the president of Yemen:

Amid all the chaos and conflict that have engulfed Yemen, one fact seems immutable: President Ali Abdullah Saleh will not voluntarily leave office any time soon. The vaguely worded pledge he issued to step aside appeared, a day later, to be just another feint. While he had seemed to be moving toward accepting a plan initially proposed in the spring by the Gulf Cooperation Council to cede power to a transitional government, two high-ranking Yemeni officials said that the country’s foreign minister had traveled to the United Arab Emirates to offer the council a new plan; this one, they said, calls for Saleh to remain in office until elections next year.
There was no immediate confirmation, but Saleh has repeatedly suggested that he would accept some version of the original plan, only to shift away from any real concessions to the political opposition. (The political opponents have been willing to negotiate for his early departure, in contrast to the street protesters, who are adamant that he resign immediately.)
A canny strongman who has ruled a fractured and impoverished country for 33 years, Saleh has withstood the pressure from both groups of opponents, as well as from regional powers and from a onetime ally, the United States. The serious injuries he suffered in June, when a fiery bomb exploded at the mosque in the presidential compound, forced him to seek months of treatment in Saudi Arabia, but could not ease his grip on power. He has done no more than toy with the plan proposed in the spring by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which offers him and his family immunity. The governing party’s new line is that “he will remain president until the early elections,” said one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, has met with a number of diplomats in recent days, including envoys from Russia, China, the European Union, and— just before leaving for the Emirates— the United States, according to the Saba news agency. Saleh’s government has made much of its role in providing the United States with the crucial intelligence on the whereabouts of the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, enabling the CIA to kill him in a drone strike at the end of September.
The council’s political transition plan, known as the Gulf initiative, was vague from the start. It was devised to find a way to ease Saleh out of office after Yemen’s anti-government protests reached a crippling pitch. The governing party, including Saleh, initially agreed that, after the initiative was signed, he would immediately transfer all presidential authority to his deputy. However, Saleh, at the last second, went back on his promise to sign the agreement.
Since then, moderates from the government and opposition have bickered over details of the plan, which was revised many times with the guidance of the international community including, to a very large extent, the United States.
Yet no measure would satisfy what some say is Saleh’s basic, nonnegotiable requirement: a plan that would not leave his foes a clear path to power.
“You know what stepping down means to him? It means surrendering to Ali Mohsin and Hamid al-Ahmar,” said another high-ranking government official, naming Saleh’s main concerns. General Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar defected to the opposition in March; Ahmar (no relation) is a telecom billionaire and a scion of the country’s leading tribal clan. Many government officials believe the two men are using the protest movement to vie for power, and the government blames them for the bomb attack on Saleh in June.
The deadlock has been costly. Anti-government demonstrations rock major cities across Yemen, the economy is ruined, violence is flaring, and outlying provinces have fallen out of government control, in some cases into the hands of Islamic militants, some of whom are associated with the local affiliate of al-Qaeda.
Yemen’s death toll remains low compared with that of other countries in revolt in the region, but it has been rising, with at least a hundred people— unarmed protesters and bystanders— killed in September, caught in the cross-fire of a divided army. Taiz, Yemen’s commercial capital in the central mountains, where the anti-government movement was always the strongest, is a war zone, according to its residents.
Furthermore, while Saleh’s political opposition has been willing to negotiate with the government, the disenchantment with him has deepened. Unlike the street protesters, the political forces are, like the government, heavily armed and ready to fight. But despite the danger of civil war, Saleh has dug in his heels to avoid what he sees as leaving the country to his rivals. Whatever concessions his party was willing to make when Saleh was in Saudi Arabia were rolled back when he returned.
Yassin Saeed Noman, the leader of Yemen’s coalition of political opponents, known as the Joint Meetings Parties, said Saleh’s return “was negative for a political solution.” He said: “It was easy for the ruling party to proceed with the political process without Saleh. It was easier to negotiate, but under his direct leadership, what can they do?” A few weeks ago, Noman displayed a document signed by a leading governing party official, signaling that the party was in agreement with the opposition as to the steps to be taken leading to transfer of power. That agreement was not formally announced, though the two sides said they were close to agreeing on how to enact the initiative.
That was on a Thursday night. Saleh returned on Friday morning.
Noman said the political opposition— which has noted that Saleh’s family has so far avoided being hit with sanctions— wanted the international community to add even more pressure on the president to leave. “Not just saying they will support, but we want real action,” he said, sitting in the reception area of his Sana'a residence. When asked to specify an action, Noman, cautious with his words, replied: “I think they have done a lot with other countries.”

Rico says the "Noman's-land" pun is too obvious, even for Rico...