Just a matter of time, buddy

Laura Ksainof and David Goodman have an article in The New York Times on the reluctance of yet another Arab leader to get with the program:

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, looking shaken at a news conference, said he would not give in to the demands of protesters who have sought his ouster during ten days of sustained demonstrations around Yemen. “Why do they want to return to chaos?” he said, offering instead to sit down with the protesters and discuss political reforms, rather than abandon his three decades of authoritarian rule.
Mr. Saleh’s embattled government has faced street demonstrations both from organized opposition parties, who have extracted concessions but demanded further reforms, and from young protesters seeking to emulate the revolutions that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.
Those two groups appear to be drawing closer. The Joint Meeting Parties, an umbrella group of opposition parties, said in a statement that it would “unite with the young protesters”, strongly condemning the “murder and acts of repression and terrorism suffered by young people and activists at the hands of the authorities”. The statement was the most explicit support of the youth offered yet by the more established opposition, which quickly dismissed Mr. Saleh’s offer of dialogue as insincere.
The opposition parties have said that they would only agree to talks if they include leaders from the southern separatist movement, a demand that Mr. Saleh has so far not addressed.
Ten ruling party members of Parliament resigned in protest because of the violence, according to Abdel Aziz Jabari, one of the members who gave up power. “We present our resignations in protest over what is happening in the Yemeni arena,” Mr. Jabari said in an interview, “and over not holding the corrupt ones accountable, and out of the necessity to respect the law and the Constitution.”
Mr. Saleh, an American ally in the fight against the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda, called the demonstrations against his government a provocation, accusing the opposition of being beholden to foreign influence. “The arbiter is the people and not the American Embassy, the United States or the European Union,” Mr. Saleh said in his speech.
The State Department has condemned attacks against protesters by government supporters in Yemen. Events over the weekend raised the specter of increased violence and tribal conflicts. Government supporters dressed in plain clothes opened fire on antigovernment protesters in front of Sana'a University, wounding four. Thousands gathered in support of Mr. Saleh on the outskirts of Sana'a, the capital, for a rally organized by the ruling party. Mr. Saleh later addressed the crowd. At least eleven people have been killed in protests this month.
In Sana'a, more than a thousand students have camped out near the university since Sunday morning in a conscious echo of the Egyptian protests in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square. Their encampment appeared well organized, with medical tents, people collecting garbage, and even civilian-run checkpoints around the perimeter.
Protesters have vowed to stay there until Mr. Saleh steps down. Non-students, including tribesmen from outside Sana'a, have joined the protest as well.
“I need my country back,” said Mohamed al-Barati, who arrived in the capital on Monday from highly impoverished Al Jawf Province in northern Yemen. “I want to see my people happy. Now we are poor in al-Jawf and we don’t have any freedoms.” Mr. Batari said he would stay until Mr. Saleh left.
In the city of Taiz, 130 miles south of the Yemeni capital, thousands have been staging a similar overnight protest since the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down ten days ago.
Mr. Saleh’s authoritarian rule began in 1978. He has promised not to run again — and also that his son would also not run — when his term expires in 2013.
In the restive south, violent protests continued to shake the city of Aden, a day after one of the most prominent southern separatists, Hassan Baoum, was arrested. There are reports that two protesters were killed by gunfire from security forces in Aden, but those could not be independently confirmed.

Rico says that “I need my country back" might just be the perfect phrase to describe what's happening in the Middle East...