Basindwa warns of civil war if Yemeni killings continue

Presiden\'t Saleh\'s resignation did little to defuse the violence in Yemen Yemeni government forces killed three people in the protest hotbed city of Taez on Friday, activists and medical workers said, while the new head of government has warned of civil war if the killing continued .
The bloodshed in Taez has made it clear that President Ali Abdullah Saleh\'s recently signed power-transfer deal has done little to stop the violence, marked by 10 months of bloodstained unrest, over the fate of Saleh and the impoverished country.
Yemen\'s Gulf Arab neighbours and their US ally hope the deal can reverse a drift toward chaos on the doorstep of the world\'s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, and stop Al-Qaeda\'s Yemeni branch from gaining a foothold near Red Sea shipping routes.
In Taez, part of the secessionist south Yemen, government forces shot dead three civilians, protest leaders and medical workers said. At least 12 civilians, government soldiers and anti-Saleh gunmen were killed in Taez in the previous several days.
The 12 dead in the city 200 km (120 miles) south of the capital Sanaa included five civilians killed by pro-Saleh troops during intense shelling of some Taez neighbourhoods, according to residents and medical workers.
Protesters in Taez are surrounded by Saleh loyalists as well as tribal forces and troops opposed to him. Taez\'s governor called for a ceasefire late on Thursday.
Mohammed Basindwa, a former foreign minister designated by opposition parties to lead a government to be split between them and Saleh\'s party, said his side would rethink its commitment to the pact if the killing in Taez did not cease.
In a statement, Basindwa said the killing in Taez was \"an intentional act to wreck the agreement\" that opposition parties signed along with Saleh, who backed out from signing the deal three times before.
An official of the opposition bloc that signed the deal said on Thursday they had agreed a cabinet line-up with Saleh\'s party which could be announced as early as Saturday.
The first official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Saleh\'s party would take portfolios including defence, foreign affairs and oil, while the opposition would get the interior, finance and education ministries.
A completed transfer of power would make Saleh the fourth Arab autocrat to be toppled by mass public protests that have reshaped the political landscape of the Middle East this year.
Yemeni political sources revealed to \'Arabstoday\' that the ruling General People\'s Congress (GPC) chose on Thursday a cabinet list that includes 14 ministerial portfolios, including the ministries of Defence, Oil and External Communications, and Public Works, and all are of the sovereign ministries, in addition to other nine ministries in the area of development and services.
The Yemeni opposition parties in the Joint Meeting Bloc (JMP) and the forces of the revolution, got the sovereign ministries of Interior, Information, Finance, Local Administration, and Trade, in addition to other nine service and development ministerial portfolios.
Sources also expected that GPC and JMP will make their final internal talks to nominate their candidates for the portfolios divided equally between them, in order to issue a presidential decree by Hadi to form the government upon the report he will have received from Prime Minister Basindwa.
The prospective government is supposed to shepherd Yemen towards a presidential election that Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, the vice president to whom Saleh has transferred his powers, has set for February 21, 2012.Under the Gulf initiative signed by Saleh, a body will be set up to restructure the armed forces. Saleh\'s son Ahmed commands the Republican Guard, one of the best equipped units.
This comes at a time when the military forces in support to the youth revolution have nominated its representatives in the Military and Security Committee in charge of re-stabilising the country. Sources close to the pro-revolution army said that the nominations were:
1- Major General / Abdullah Ali Elewa, former Defense Minister
2- Major General / Hussein Mohammed Arab, former Interior Minister.
 3- Al-Zaheri  Al-Shaddadi / the Chief of Staff of the North West region.
4- Major General / Saleh Ad-Dhaneen, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.
5- Major General / Mohamed Haitham, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics.
6- Major General / Omar Abdel Samad, former Commander of Camp.
7- Saif al-Dhalei, Commander of the Central Region.
The ruling GPC did not submit its representatives in the committee, which will assume the tasks of sending the military units to their barracks, the removal of the military  presence in the cities and restore the situation as it was prior to the outbreak of youth revolution, resolve disputes between tribes and military units, determine the commitment of the parties to the mechanism of the committee and implementing its decisions and determine the contribution of the parties in the establishment of security and public order. It will start functioning immediately after the announcement of its formation and until the early presidential elections.
Protesters in Taez and elsewhere have denounced the immunity from prosecution that Saleh and his relatives would enjoy under the power transfer deal.
Human Rights Watch said last week that up to 35 civilians had been killed in Taez since a UN Security Council resolution in October that endorsed the call for a power transfer and condemned the crackdown on protesters.
The group said most of those civilians were killed by artillery fire from Yemeni government forces, and called on the Security Council to freeze the assets of top Yemeni officials and distance itself from any promises of immunity.
Saleh\'s successor will face multiple overlapping conflicts that have gained force during the political crisis, including rising separatist sentiment in the south, which fought a civil war with Saleh\'s north in 1994, and fighting with Islamists who have seized territory in the southern province of Abyan.
An local official in Abyan said the head of a volunteer force fighting Islamists was wounded and another person killed when unidentified attackers hurled a bomb at him as he was en route to Friday morning prayers in the city of Lawdar.
The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen called on Thursday for immediate access to conflict zones -- including one in northern Saada province, calling the humanitarian situation dire.