Online Sex Videos Force Resignations of Six Members of Turkish Opposition Party

ISTANBUL — Just weeks before general elections in Turkey, six leading members of an opposition party were forced to resign from Parliament on Saturday after sexually explicit videos of one of them were posted on the Internet.

The Web site that posted the videos had threatened to release others that it said showed the five other members who resigned.

The resignations could severely weaken the Nationalist Movement Party, the second largest opposition group in Parliament, which is struggling to win the minimum of 10 percent of the vote required to be seated in Parliament.

Four members of Parliament from the same party resigned earlier this month after similar videos were posted on the same Web site.

The Web site, farkliulkuculer.com, has cast itself as part of a breakaway ultranationalist group aiming to cleanse and reform the nationalist movement in Turkey. The site’s administrators are anonymous.

The Public Communication Agency, which monitors Internet traffic in Turkey, blocked access to the Web site shortly after the videos were uploaded, presumably because of their explicit content.

Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Movement, denounced the videos as blackmail. “It is not correct to mess with these people’s personalities,” he said.

He said the Web site had demanded his resignation by last Wednesday if he wanted the videos to remain secret. He had earlier vowed not to yield to such threats.

Representatives of his party, noting that if they lose representation in Parliament the governing Justice and Development Party would be likely to gain, have accused the government of failing to properly investigate the videos and the Web site.

Lawyers for the Nationalist Movement filed a claim with a court in Ankara, the capital, on Wednesday demanding an investigation. The filing, citing calls made on a cellphone linked to the Web site, said that the video scandal was organized in the United States. Party leaders have previously accused a Turkish-American religious group, Fethullah Gulen, of working with the governing party to drive the Nationalist Movement from politics.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has campaigned strongly against the Nationalists, rebuffed those claims in a television show last week, saying that the Nationalist Movement was trying to blame the government for its internal problems.

The Nationalist Movement Party held 72 seats in the 540-member Parliament before the resignations on Saturday, and polls before the resignations showed it winning about 12 percent of the vote in the election next month. The governing Justice and Development Party is expected to win a third term as the majority government.

Political analysts, pointing to the timing of the release of videos that were evidently collected over a long period, expressed concern about the unethical tactics used to attack the Nationalists. “With these large number of resignations, we have an unprecedented scene here in the world of politics,” said Fatih Cekirge, a political analyst speaking on NTV, who called the blackmailing “political genocide.”

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Belarus Opposition Leader Gets a Five-Year Sentence

Andrei Sannikov, a former deputy foreign minister, is the highest-profile politician to be sentenced in a series of trials that has been purging the leadership of the beleaguered opposition in the former Soviet republic.

The courtroom erupted in shouts of “Shame!” and “Freedom!” from Mr. Sannikov’s supporters when the judge read the verdict, according to Radio Liberty.

The demonstration was called to protest the victory of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko in a presidential election last December, after independent observers documented large-scale fraud. Mr. Sannikov, 57, was a candidate in that election.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital, Minsk, for the protest, which international observers and independent journalists said was largely peaceful until helmeted riot police officers wielding clubs and shields dispersed it. The government, however, accused Mr. Sannikov and other opposition leaders of fueling mass unrest that led to the breaking down of doors of a government building in Minsk.

The resulting crackdown, observers say, has been the most severe of Mr. Lukashenko’s nearly 17-year rule. Seven of the nine opposition candidates were among the hundreds arrested after the protest, and over two dozen opposition figures have been convicted and sentenced to up to four years in prison.

Mr. Sannikov has spent the last five months in a cell at the prison of the K.G.B. in Minsk.

In testimony, Mr. Sannikov accused prison guards of torturing him and other opposition figures, depriving them of sleep, exposing them to severe cold and threatening family members in an effort to secure confessions.

Mr. Sannikov accused the head of the K.G.B., Vadim Zaitsev, of threatening to harm his wife and young son if he did not agree to give incriminating testimony.

“When I refused to affirm this lie that was offered to me, when I refused to write a petition, Zaitsev literally said the following: ‘Then harsh measures will be taken against your wife and child,’?” Mr. Sannikov said, according to a transcript of his testimony published to the opposition Web site, Charter 97.

Mr. Sannikov was arrested along with his wife, Irina Khalip, a journalist, after the December protest. Both said they were beaten. After their arrest, the authorities threatened to take custody of their son, Danil, but eventually allowed Ms. Khalip’s parents to care for the boy, who will turn 4 on Sunday. Ms. Khalip was later released from prison under house arrest, and is now on trial.

Mr. Lukashenko and his government have portrayed Mr. Sannikov and the opposition as traitors who tried to orchestrate a coup with the backing of Western governments.

In recent months, the president has blamed the opposition and its Western backers for the country’s increasingly dire economic situation, although most opposition members are in jail, in exile or in hiding. Mr. Lukashenko has also said the opposition was linked to the terrorist bombing at a Minsk subway station last month that killed 14 people.

Anton Zagorovsky, the prosecutor in Mr. Sannikov’s trial, had requested that the opposition leader be sentenced to seven years in prison.

“From November to December 20, Sannikov and others organized mass unrest, accompanied by pogroms, preparations for arson, the destruction of property, violence against people and armed resistance against representatives of the government,” Mr. Zagorovsky said in closing remarks on Friday, the Interfax news agency reported.

Independent observers have challenged this version of events, which has nevertheless been zealously repeated by officials and the government-controlled media. The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions against Belarussian officials as punishment for the crackdown and have demanded the release of Mr. Sannikov and other opposition members.

Even Belarus’s once stalwart ally Russia has criticized the government for its handling of the protest.

Representatives from the United States and the European Union were present at Mr. Sannikov’s sentencing on Saturday.

The United States and the European bloc condemned the verdict. A State Department spokesman called the decision “clearly politically motivated.”

“Belarus should immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners and cease continuing human rights violations against critics of the government, who remain at risk of harassment and arbitrary arrest,” the spokesman, Mark Toner, said.

Mr. Sannikov’s lawyers called the 10-day trial against him a farce. Witnesses provided no evidence that Mr. Sannikov or others had engaged in violence as the prosecutor contended, the lawyers said.

Four other opposition activists on trial with Mr. Sannikov were also convicted and sentenced on Saturday to between 3 and 3 ? years in prison.

Speaking to Radio Liberty after the verdict, Mr. Sannikov’s mother, Alla, said she was proud of her son.

 

Opposition Makes Inroads in Singapore

BANGKOK — The ruling People’s Action Party led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was returned to power on Sunday with a majority of 60 percent of the vote after a hard-fought parliamentary campaign in which opposition parties made their strongest inroads since Singapore’s independence in 1965.

The opposition was contesting all but one constituency for the first time, drawing enthusiastic crowds, many of them energized by Internet campaigning that opened the race to a clamor of voices and points of view in this tightly controlled city-state.

In a significant upset, a five-member Workers’ Party slate won a group-candidate constituency over a ruling party slate that included two cabinet ministers. The results assured the opposition of its largest representation in Parliament in history.

One other member of the Workers’ Party was also elected, meaning that the ruling party will hold 81 seats to the opposition’s 6.

The popular vote was also a concern for the ruling party. It received just over 60 percent of the ballots cast, the lowest in its history, down from 67 percent in 2006 and 75 percent in 2001.

“We understand that this was a watershed election,” said the prime minister, who promised to study the outcome and listen to the voters.

The People’s Action Party, or P.A.P., has never been out of power, and until 1981 there were no opposition members of Parliament. Until this election, there had never been more than four members from opposition parties. The ruling party’s loss of seats was its biggest since independence.

“A new chapter has opened in Singapore’s history,” said the foreign minister, George Yeo, one of the cabinet ministers who lost his seat. “There was a tide we could not overcome.”

In the last election, in 2006, the opposition put up candidates in only about half the constituencies, winning just two parliamentary seats. This year, candidates for six opposition parties contested 82 of 87 seats.

As public counting of the votes ran deep into the night, constituency by constituency, it became evident that many opposition candidates had made strong challenges even in constituencies they had lost and that the overall percentage of votes won by the ruling party was declining.

The ruling party faced voter discontent over inflation and a growing imbalance of wealth as well as resistance to an influx of foreign workers. The online campaigns gave new voice to public discontent over the P.A.P.’s monopoly on power.

“Your votes tell us that the government that you want is a home, not just a house,” Low Thia Khiang, the Workers’ Party chief, said in a victory speech, contrasting his group’s approach with the hard-nosed and technocratic leadership of the P.A.P.

“Your votes tell the world that Singapore is just not an economic success to you,” he said. “Singapore is our home.” In their victory statements, members of the ruling party, one after another, acknowledged the slip in their popularity and promised to try harder in the future.

In the closing days of the campaign, Prime Minister Lee apologized for any mistakes the government had made, underlining the ruling party’s concerns about voter discontent.

“If we didn’t quite get it right, I am sorry, but we will try and do better the next time,” he told a rally on Tuesday, according to local newspaper reports. Later, he repeated: “Well, we’re sorry we didn’t get it exactly right, but I hope you’ll understand and bear with us because we’re trying our best to fix the problems.”

In what seemed an attempt to embrace the future, Singapore loosened its grip on political discourse in the unruly world of the Internet.

Government opponents are often sued for defamation, and public speech has been permitted only in a small park called Speakers’ Corner (which was shut down in the campaign). But experts say the new opening, if only in the virtual world, appears to be a redefinition of what are known as “out-of-bounds markers.”

Following changes to the Constitution and election laws, campaigning is now permitted throughout cyberspace — in podcasts, videos, blogs, instant messaging, photo-sharing platforms like Flickr, social networking sites and electronic media applications like those on cellphones.

For the first time, campaign recordings could be posted as long as they were not “dramatized” or published “out of context.” Video taken at an election rally was able to be uploaded onto the Web without being submitted to the Board of Film Censors.

“Social media have lowered the barriers of entry into political discourse everywhere,” said Mark Cenite, an assistant professor of communication and information at Nanyang Technological University. “But that’s particularly significant in Singapore because here the barriers to entry into political discourse and the accompanying risks have been so high.”

Rather than trying to suppress online political organizing, as China and Vietnam have done, Singapore has taken a gamble on making it part of the legal campaign system.

Opposition Web sites and Twitter accounts were used to urge people to attend election rallies. They also sent out streams of comments from rallies, increasing their audience. The site Gothere plotted out the locations of rallies on a map.

The site Party Time gathered conversations about the elections and graphically presented who was getting the most buzz online.

Facebook is estimated to have up to three million members in Singapore, whose population is more than five million. All seven competing parties have their own sites. By one estimate, there are 900,000 local users of Twitter.

Online coverage pushed the main pro-government newspaper, The Straits Times, to publish fuller and not always critical news and photographs of opposition campaigns, said Alex Au, a prominent blogger.

The Straits Times also dedicated a portal on its Web site to extensive electronic election coverage, and collected comments from the social media on a page called Buzz:

“The opposition can make ferocious speeches, but can they deliver?”

“Is it true that civil servants will be ostracized if they vote for the opposition?”

“Why must we be so dogmatic about democracy and stability being mutually exclusive?”

View the original article here

Opposition Makes Inroads in Singapore

BANGKOK — The ruling People’s Action Party led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was returned to power on Sunday with a majority of 60 percent of the vote after a hard-fought parliamentary campaign in which opposition parties made their strongest inroads since Singapore’s independence in 1965.

The opposition was contesting all but one constituency for the first time, drawing enthusiastic crowds, many of them energized by Internet campaigning that opened the race to a clamor of voices and points of view in this tightly controlled city-state.

In a significant upset, a five-member Workers’ Party slate won a group-candidate constituency over a ruling party slate that included two cabinet ministers. The results assured the opposition of its largest representation in Parliament in history.

One other member of the Workers’ Party was also elected, meaning that the ruling party will hold 81 seats to the opposition’s 6.

The popular vote was also a concern for the ruling party. It received just over 60 percent of the ballots cast, the lowest in its history, down from 67 percent in 2006 and 75 percent in 2001.

“We understand that this was a watershed election,” said the prime minister, who promised to study the outcome and listen to the voters.

The People’s Action Party, or P.A.P., has never been out of power, and until 1981 there were no opposition members of Parliament. Until this election, there had never been more than four members from opposition parties. The ruling party’s loss of seats was its biggest since independence.

“A new chapter has opened in Singapore’s history,” said the foreign minister, George Yeo, one of the cabinet ministers who lost his seat. “There was a tide we could not overcome.”

In the last election, in 2006, the opposition put up candidates in only about half the constituencies, winning just two parliamentary seats. This year, candidates for six opposition parties contested 82 of 87 seats.

As public counting of the votes ran deep into the night, constituency by constituency, it became evident that many opposition candidates had made strong challenges even in constituencies they had lost and that the overall percentage of votes won by the ruling party was declining.

The ruling party faced voter discontent over inflation and a growing imbalance of wealth as well as resistance to an influx of foreign workers. The online campaigns gave new voice to public discontent over the P.A.P.’s monopoly on power.

“Your votes tell us that the government that you want is a home, not just a house,” Low Thia Khiang, the Workers’ Party chief, said in a victory speech, contrasting his group’s approach with the hard-nosed and technocratic leadership of the P.A.P.

“Your votes tell the world that Singapore is just not an economic success to you,” he said. “Singapore is our home.” In their victory statements, members of the ruling party, one after another, acknowledged the slip in their popularity and promised to try harder in the future.

In the closing days of the campaign, Prime Minister Lee apologized for any mistakes the government had made, underlining the ruling party’s concerns about voter discontent.

“If we didn’t quite get it right, I am sorry, but we will try and do better the next time,” he told a rally on Tuesday, according to local newspaper reports. Later, he repeated: “Well, we’re sorry we didn’t get it exactly right, but I hope you’ll understand and bear with us because we’re trying our best to fix the problems.”

In what seemed an attempt to embrace the future, Singapore loosened its grip on political discourse in the unruly world of the Internet.

Government opponents are often sued for defamation, and public speech has been permitted only in a small park called Speakers’ Corner (which was shut down in the campaign). But experts say the new opening, if only in the virtual world, appears to be a redefinition of what are known as “out-of-bounds markers.”

Following changes to the Constitution and election laws, campaigning is now permitted throughout cyberspace — in podcasts, videos, blogs, instant messaging, photo-sharing platforms like Flickr, social networking sites and electronic media applications like those on cellphones.

For the first time, campaign recordings could be posted as long as they were not “dramatized” or published “out of context.” Video taken at an election rally was able to be uploaded onto the Web without being submitted to the Board of Film Censors.

“Social media have lowered the barriers of entry into political discourse everywhere,” said Mark Cenite, an assistant professor of communication and information at Nanyang Technological University. “But that’s particularly significant in Singapore because here the barriers to entry into political discourse and the accompanying risks have been so high.”

Rather than trying to suppress online political organizing, as China and Vietnam have done, Singapore has taken a gamble on making it part of the legal campaign system.

Opposition Web sites and Twitter accounts were used to urge people to attend election rallies. They also sent out streams of comments from rallies, increasing their audience. The site Gothere plotted out the locations of rallies on a map.

The site Party Time gathered conversations about the elections and graphically presented who was getting the most buzz online.

Facebook is estimated to have up to three million members in Singapore, whose population is more than five million. All seven competing parties have their own sites. By one estimate, there are 900,000 local users of Twitter.

Online coverage pushed the main pro-government newspaper, The Straits Times, to publish fuller and not always critical news and photographs of opposition campaigns, said Alex Au, a prominent blogger.

The Straits Times also dedicated a portal on its Web site to extensive electronic election coverage, and collected comments from the social media on a page called Buzz:

“The opposition can make ferocious speeches, but can they deliver?”

“Is it true that civil servants will be ostracized if they vote for the opposition?”

“Why must we be so dogmatic about democracy and stability being mutually exclusive?”

 

Canadian Leader Celebrates Victory Over Opposition

Not only were his campaign’s tight controls over questions from reporters gone, but Mr. Harper even returned to the lectern twice after aides had declared the session over.

And instead of offering only terse, tightly scripted answers, Mr. Harper joked and even mildly mocked himself at points.

He had good reason to be upbeat and relaxed. After the two previous elections had left him short of a voting majority, Mr. Harper was returned to office on Monday with his Conservatives holding 167 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. The party, which had relied on its power base in Western Canada, also boasts significant representation in Ontario, the most populous province, for the first time in years.

And with the exception of the New Democratic Party, which made a significant breakthrough in Quebec, Mr. Harper left the opposition reeling.

The Liberals, once Canada’s most powerful party, were reduced to 34 seats, a historic low. The election was the first in which the Liberals had not finished first or second. Their leader, Michael Ignatieff, lost his own seat in Toronto and announced his resignation as head of the party on Tuesday morning.

The separatist Bloc Québécois, the dominant federal party in Quebec for two decades, was reduced to only four seats in the House of Commons. It no longer meets the official standard for a political party, which requires at least 12 seats. The New Democrats won 102 seats, which made the party the official opposition for the first time in its history.

Because Canadian leaders hold a tight grip over their caucus members, Mr. Harper’s majority means that his new government’s agenda can pass through Parliament more or less unchallenged.

Two questions have emerged from the election: How will Mr. Harper govern now that he has a majority? And did the election results represent a fundamental altering of the political landscape?

Mr. Harper has already said he would reintroduce measures that had previously failed to muster opposition support when his party governed without a majority, including a series of law-and-order bills. But he was also careful to emphasize that his now powerful government will keep to the same path it followed during its minority days. He flatly ruled out substantial change to Canada’s public health care system, a program that is not universally popular on the right.

“One thing I’ve learned in this business is that surprises are generally not well received by the public,” he said at the news conference in Calgary, Alberta. “Even as a majority you have to, on an ongoing basis, keep the trust of the population.”

Perhaps tempering Mr. Harper’s ambition is the fact that his party captured only about 40 percent of the popular vote. And while the Conservatives worked to build ties to members of ethnic communities in and around Toronto, Canada’s largest city, many of its election victories there came because the Liberals and New Democrats split the left-of-center vote.

During the campaign, the opposition parties warned voters that Mr. Harper would use a majority to bring enormous changes to Canada. But several Conservative supporters said that they did not expect him to introduce a far-right agenda.

“His goal is to destroy the Liberal Party by becoming the Liberal Party,” said Gerry Nicholls, a communications consultant in Oakville, Ontario, who worked for Mr. Harper when he ran a group that lobbied for smaller government and lower taxes. “He’s stealing all of their oxygen; he’s trying to suffocate them.”

While Mr. Nicholls is among those who want to see Mr. Harper adopt a more radical agenda, David J. Bercuson, a historian at the University of Calgary, said the prime minister was more interested in maintaining and building his majority.

“He washed his brain of ideology a long time ago,” he said.

Even so, Mr. Harper has already made it clear that he will move swiftly on several matters that were unpopular with the opposition, including shutting down a disputed registry for rifles, ending direct government subsidies of political parties and maintaining previously scheduled corporate tax cuts. It also seems unlikely that his government will take any significant steps to curb greenhouse gases; such curbs are very unpopular in Western Canada, home to the country’s large oil and gas industries.

Mr. Bercuson expects Mr. Harper to follow the lead of Brian Mulroney, the last Conservative to govern with a majority, in the 1980s. Mr. Mulroney negotiated a controversial free-trade agreement with the United States that later became Nafta. Mr. Bercuson said he thought Mr. Harper would probably move to create a common border perimeter around Canada and the United States to ease travel between the two countries. Such a step is bound to be contentious, because it may require Canada to align its immigration laws with those of the United States.

Several analysts said Mr. Harper has long hoped that the two parties left standing in Parliament would be the Conservatives and the New Democrats, a labor-backed group that is to the left of the Liberals. Many Conservatives believe that if Canadians were given a straightforward left-right voting choice, their party would become the country’s dominant political force.

 

Ugandan Opposition Figure Arrested Again

KAMPALA, Uganda – The leading opposition politician in Uganda was arrested Thursday after police prevented him from leading a demonstration here, only a day after being granted bail from a previous arrest over a similar protest.

Dr. Kizza Besigye, a retired army colonel and former confidante to President Yoweri Museveni, was hauled out of his car and members of his staff were severely beaten after a two-hour standoff with police in central Kampala as Mr. Besigye was driving slowly to work from his home, followed by hundreds of supporters on foot.

A Ugandan police spokeswoman said officers tried to get Mr. Besigye to use a different route as he entered the city center but that the politician refused. As the crowds built up, a plainclothes officer shattered Mr. Besigye’s passenger window with a hammer and sprayed Mr. Besigye in the face with pepper spray, Reuters reported, before officers detained him.

“We tried to engage him, so that he could continue alone, but he resisted,” said the police spokeswoman, Judith Nabakooba. “His supporters shouted, they started becoming rowdy, and started hitting vehicles with stones.”

“For security reasons,” Ms. Nabakooba said, “we decided to use the last option, which was to get him out of his vehicle.”

Mr. Besigye, who was released on bail Wednesday after being arrested last Thursday for leading protests, had attempted to stage a fifth-round of his walk-to-work demonstration against rising commodity prices Thursday morning, but was stopped by police outside his gate. Mr. Besigye then got into his car and drove into town instead, with crowds trailing behind.

The arrest on Thursday was the fourth in recent weeks for Mr. Besigye. The American government has condemned the crackdown on street protestors, urging the Ugandan government to respect civil liberties.

 

Yemen’s Opposition Accepts Deal for Transfer of Power

Yemen’s opposition coalition on Monday accepted a proposal for a transfer of power, bringing the country closer to a resolution of months of political turmoil and countless demonstrations calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

The police used a water cannon to disperse protesters demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Taiz, Yemen, on Monday.

“We have accepted the gulf proposal on condition that the protests are allowed to continue until Saleh leaves office,” said Mohammed Qahtan, a spokesman for the coalition, which is known as the J.M.P. “Leaders of the J.M.P. met with the American ambassador today, and he confirmed for us that the protests can continue through this month; this is why we agreed to the proposal.”

However, when Mr. Saleh announced, on Saturday, his acceptance of the plan from a six-nation regional bloc known as the Gulf Cooperation Council, his agreement was based on the condition that the protest demonstrations would stop immediately.

The proposal, which was put together by the council in consultation with the United States and the European Union, was presented to the Yemeni government and the opposition last week. It was seen as probably the last effort to solve the political crisis that had brought Yemen, an already fragile country, closer to chaos. An economic crisis looms, and violence between armed gunmen and security forces in outlying provinces has increased over the last week. At least 120 protesters have been killed since the uprising began in February, according to Amnesty International.

If the two sides formally agree to the proposal, the president would leave office after 30 days and a presidential election would be held 60 days later, in accordance with Yemen’s Constitution.

The political opposition has also agreed to participate in a unity government with Mr. Saleh, which would govern during the 30 days before he leaves office. The opposition had initially objected to this provision.

The agreement, however, also signals a deepening rift between the political opposition and the street protesters who had already rejected the Gulf Cooperation Council’s proposal. The protesters do not trust that Mr. Saleh will leave office as the mediated settlement required, and they do not think that he and his family should be granted immunity, which is called for in the agreement.

Witnesses said that the protest demonstration in Sana, the capital, had grown since the president announced that he had accepted the proposal, and protesters were angered by Mr. Saleh’s comments in an interview with the BBC that members of Al Qaeda had infiltrated protest camps.

 

Opposition in Yemen Divided Over Offer From President

Mr. Saleh’s offer, which was mediated by his Arab neighbors, has accentuated the divisions within his opposition. The opposition coalition, known as the J.M.P., which includes seven political parties, said Sunday that it welcomed the initiative, but only if a national unity government was formed after Mr. Saleh stepped down, not immediately as the current proposal put together by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes six member nations, calls for. The coalition parties do not want to be part of a government with Mr. Saleh.

The protesters are taking a harder line, and say that the J.M.P. is out of touch with the demands of what are known as the “independent” youth not affiliated with standing political parties. Leaders of some of the tens of thousands of street protesters — originally young people but now Yemenis from all segments of society who have set up permanent protests camps in cities throughout the country — said they suspected that Mr. Saleh could wiggle out of the deal at a later date, and try to extend his 33-year rule.

Many said they were inspired by the youthful protests in Tunisia and Egypt, which forced autocrats in those countries out relatively quickly and without conditions. They said they wanted a similar outcome here.

Ataif Alwazir, one organizer in Sana, said she and many others in the streets were against agreeing to Mr. Saleh’s offer.

“It’s just another game,” she said. “Let the J.M.P. do what they have to do politically, negotiate, and the youth will do what they have to do and stay in the streets.”

Ms. Alwazir said the idea of immunity for Mr. Saleh and his sons had divided many as well.

Protesters have repeatedly voiced their rejection of the offer of immunity for the president, though on Sunday there was some chatter via social networking Web sites arguing for a more pragmatic approach if it meant ushering Mr. Saleh to exit.

Other protesters feel that Mr. Saleh’s acceptance of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s proposal was typical of his political cunning and a move to put the opposition in a bad light and make it seem as if he were the one working to stop the country from falling into chaos.

“This initiative is for the sake of the regime,” said Tawfiq al-Shaoubi, a protest leader in the central city of Taiz, home to Yemen’s largest demonstration. “We will keep protesting,” he said. “This is regime must go so we can a build a new modern society in Yemen.”

In Sana, protesters who have camped out for weeks appeared to have no intention of moving and continued with their demonstrations on Sunday, chanting, “No negotiation, no dialogue — resign or flee,” according to Reuters.

In an interview with BBC Arabic television on Sunday, Mr. Saleh said he would not hand over power to what he termed “insurrectionists.”

“Who shall I hand it over to?” he told the BBC. “Those who are trying to make a coup? No. We will do it through ballot boxes and referendums. We’ll invite international observers to monitor. Any coup is rejected because we are committed to the constitutional legitimacy and don’t accept chaos.”

Mr. Saleh also said that Al Qaeda, which is known to have a presence in the country, had infiltrated protest camps. “Al Qaeda are moving inside the camps, and this is very dangerous,” he said. “Why is the West not looking at this destructive work and its dangerous implications for the future?”

His call to use the ballot box added to the distrust among his opponents. “The G.C.C. announced that he agrees to leave after 30 days, and he says he’s only leaving through the ballot box,” said Ms. Alwazir, the youth leader. “There’s not trust,” she said. “Especially since he’s contradicting himself right now.”

An independent Yemeni diplomat, who did not want to be identified, said that Mr. Saleh seemed confused and reluctant to step aside, but that he had drawn his own lessons from the experience of Egypt and knew he should take advantage of this offer of immunity. Mr. Saleh also fears that no immunity deal would be ironclad, the diplomat said.

He said that some in the opposition understood Yemen’s delicate state, with violence in outlying provinces increasing and the economy floundering, which is why they were willing to compromise slightly.

“Some J.M.P. leaders understand the current state of the Yemeni scene,” the diplomat said. “They realize that Yemen is on the brink of total collapse and might face a civil war.” But others, he said, chiefly Islamists from the Islah Party, want to keep pushing until they seize power, signaling a split not just between protesters and the formal political parties but also within the coalition itself.

 

Opposition in Yemen Divided Over Offer From President

Mr. Saleh’s offer, which was mediated by his Arab neighbors, has accentuated the divisions within his opposition. The opposition coalition, known as the J.M.P., which includes seven political parties, said Sunday that it welcomed the initiative, but only if a national unity government was formed after Mr. Saleh stepped down, not immediately as the current proposal put together by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes six member nations, calls for. The coalition parties do not want to be part of a government with Mr. Saleh.

The protesters are taking a harder line, and say that the J.M.P. is out of touch with the demands of what are known as the “independent” youth not affiliated with standing political parties. Leaders of some of the tens of thousands of street protesters — originally young people but now Yemenis from all segments of society who have set up permanent protests camps in cities throughout the country — said they suspected that Mr. Saleh could wiggle out of the deal at a later date, and try to extend his 33-year rule.

Many said they were inspired by the youthful protests in Tunisia and Egypt, which forced autocrats in those countries out relatively quickly and without conditions. They said they wanted a similar outcome here.

Ataif Alwazir, one organizer in Sana, said she and many others in the streets were against agreeing to Mr. Saleh’s offer.

“It’s just another game,” she said. “Let the J.M.P. do what they have to do politically, negotiate, and the youth will do what they have to do and stay in the streets.”

Ms. Alwazir said the idea of immunity for Mr. Saleh and his sons had divided many as well.

Protesters have repeatedly voiced their rejection of the offer of immunity for the president, though on Sunday there was some chatter via social networking Web sites arguing for a more pragmatic approach if it meant ushering Mr. Saleh to exit.

Other protesters feel that Mr. Saleh’s acceptance of the Gulf Cooperation Council’s proposal was typical of his political cunning and a move to put the opposition in a bad light and make it seem as if he were the one working to stop the country from falling into chaos.

“This initiative is for the sake of the regime,” said Tawfiq al-Shaoubi, a protest leader in the central city of Taiz, home to Yemen’s largest demonstration. “We will keep protesting,” he said. “This is regime must go so we can a build a new modern society in Yemen.”

In Sana, protesters who have camped out for weeks appeared to have no intention of moving and continued with their demonstrations on Sunday, chanting, “No negotiation, no dialogue — resign or flee,” according to Reuters.

In an interview with BBC Arabic television on Sunday, Mr. Saleh said he would not hand over power to what he termed “insurrectionists.”

“Who shall I hand it over to?” he told the BBC. “Those who are trying to make a coup? No. We will do it through ballot boxes and referendums. We’ll invite international observers to monitor. Any coup is rejected because we are committed to the constitutional legitimacy and don’t accept chaos.”

Mr. Saleh also said that Al Qaeda, which is known to have a presence in the country, had infiltrated protest camps. “Al Qaeda are moving inside the camps, and this is very dangerous,” he said. “Why is the West not looking at this destructive work and its dangerous implications for the future?”

His call to use the ballot box added to the distrust among his opponents. “The G.C.C. announced that he agrees to leave after 30 days, and he says he’s only leaving through the ballot box,” said Ms. Alwazir, the youth leader. “There’s not trust,” she said. “Especially since he’s contradicting himself right now.”

An independent Yemeni diplomat, who did not want to be identified, said that Mr. Saleh seemed confused and reluctant to step aside, but that he had drawn his own lessons from the experience of Egypt and knew he should take advantage of this offer of immunity. Mr. Saleh also fears that no immunity deal would be ironclad, the diplomat said.

He said that some in the opposition understood Yemen’s delicate state, with violence in outlying provinces increasing and the economy floundering, which is why they were willing to compromise slightly.

“Some J.M.P. leaders understand the current state of the Yemeni scene,” the diplomat said. “They realize that Yemen is on the brink of total collapse and might face a civil war.” But others, he said, chiefly Islamists from the Islah Party, want to keep pushing until they seize power, signaling a split not just between protesters and the formal political parties but also within the coalition itself.

 

Opposition Leader Besigye Arrested in Uganda Protest

 

KAMPALA, Uganda — The leading opposition figure here was arrested on Monday and charged with inciting violence, as a third day of street demonstrations in the Ugandan capital ended in shrouds of tear gas and rubber bullets.

The “walk to work” protests are a campaign against spiraling fuel and food prices led by a former presidential candidate, Kizza Besigye.

Despite the meager size of the protests — rarely numbering more than a few hundred people in a country of more than 30 million — they have elicited a crushing response by government security forces, sending tear gas through crowds of bystanders and university dormitories. Demonstrators were beaten and fired upon, further raising political tensions.

Mr. Besigye was dragged onto the back of a pickup truck by several police officers on Monday, his right hand in a cast and sling after being shot by military police with a rubber bullet on Thursday, the second day of the walk to work demonstrations. Monday’s demonstration was the third, and comes as riots have broken out in a number of universities in Kampala.

A police spokeswoman, Judith Nabakooba, said the protests in Kampala had dissipated by the early afternoon and that 98 people, including major political figures, had been arrested.

“The situation has been contained,” Officer Nabakooba said. She also said there had been protests in the nearby city of Jinja, on the Nile River, but those too had been pacified.

Mr. Besigye, who won just over 20 percent of the vote in February, swore earlier this month that he would walk from his home on the outskirts of Kampala to the city center each Monday and Thursday to raise attention to skyrocketing commodity prices that he said are spurred on by government corruption.

Mr. Besigye cited an unexpected $250 million supplementary budget just before February’s election, the recent purchase of Russian fighter jets for about $750 million, as well as lucrative but secretive oil contracts signed by the government after major oil discoveries in the country’s west.

Mr. Besigye vowed on Monday that he would walk to work again on Thursday.

On Saturday, President Yoweri Museveni said that Ugandans should not complain about rising food prices, and that the government would crush any demonstration, including the walk to work movement.