Yemen President Won't Step Down

Talk about a flip-flop. A day after Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh said he was ready to hand over power to “ safe hands,” he now says he isn't leaving. “A presidential source denied on Saturday what have been reported by some media outlets that President Ali Abdullah Saleh will step down,” said a statement from the official Saba news agency. In an interview with Al Arabiya television on Sunday, he warned that if the protests don't end, Yemen will descend into civil war. “Yemen is a time bomb,” Saleh said. “Everyone will side with his tribe and we will then end up with a destructive civil war.” But then he again gestured toward handing off power, saying only, “I want to transfer it to people peacefully, not with chaos.” When the protests began, Saleh said he would hand over power at the end of the year, but protesters rejected his plan and continued to call for his immediate ouster.