The former Yemeni Prime Minister Haidar Abu Bakar Al-Atass has called for removing the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and his aides from Yemen in order to help the state overcome its challenges.
In an interview with the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, he cautioned against turning Yemen to a battlefield of regional and international conflicts under the reasons of combating Al-Qaeda and terrorism.
Al-Atass who presided over the first government after the Yemeni unification in 1990 affirmed that Saleh has not respected immunity given to him by Yemen's parliament, hinting that Saleh and his family seek to spark turbulence and turmoil inside the state, calling in the meantime for a unification state based on equal citizenship and justice.
He asserted that the Yemeni stalemate is a political in the first place and that other problems will be solved easily, reiterating that Saleh created Al-Qaeda in the South and that he attempted to assassinate southern leaders.
Al-Atass who is in exile since the 1994 conflict called for reconstruction of the military and security forces in order to enable the interim government to perform its tasks, citing that he took part in a meeting with Yemeni leaders in Berlin mediated by German institutions, referring that mechanisms of the national dialogue were discussed.
He also stressed that the references of the dialogue should be based on three cases; the Southern Movement, the case of Saada and the Yemeni public revolution.
He said that the global community occurred in mistakes as it granted Saleh immunity and the partnership in the interim government that his stay poses threats to Yemen's stability and security.