Yemen

Country in southwest Asia, bounded north by Saudi Arabia, east by Oman, south by the Gulf of Aden, and west by the Red Sea.

Government
The 1991 constitution, as subsequently amended, provides for a president and a two-chamber legislature. The president is elected for seven years (renewable once) by popular vote from at least two candidates endorsed by parliament. The president is head of state and appoints a council of ministers, headed by a prime minister. The parliament comprises a 301-member house of representatives, directly elected for six years, and an appointed 111-member shura council.

History
North Yemen was a kingdom in the 2nd millennium BC, followed by successive periods of rule by Egypt, Rome, and Ethiopia. North Yemen adopted Islam in 628, formed part of the Ottoman Empire 1538–1630, and was occupied by Turkey in the 19th century, becoming independent in 1918. In 1839, the British occupied Aden, the port in South Yemen, and held it and surrounding areas as a protectorate until 1967.

North Yemen declared a republic
The last king of North Yemen, Imam Muhammad, was killed in a military coup in 1962. The declaration of the new Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) provoked a civil war between royalist forces, assisted by Saudi Arabia, and republicans, helped by Egypt. By 1967 the republicans, under Marshal Abdullah al-Sallal, had won. Later that year Sallal was deposed while on a foreign visit, and a Republican Council took over.

South Yemen republic founded
The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) was founded in 1967 by the union of Aden and the Federation of South Arabia, both of which had been under British rule or protection. Before Britain withdrew, two rival factions fought for power, the Marxist National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen. The NLF eventually won and assumed power as the National Front (NF). In November 1970, the country was renamed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, and a provisional Supreme People's Council was set up in 1971 as the nation's parliament.

The accession of the left-wing NF government caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee to North Yemen, where a more moderate regime was in power. This resulted in clashes between the South Yemen government and mercenaries operating from North Yemen, and war broke out in 1971. The Arab League arranged a ceasefire in 1972, and the two countries signed an agreement to merge, but the agreement was not honoured.

In North Yemen the pro-Saudi Col Ibrahim al-Hamadi seized power in 1974, and by 1975 there were rumours of an attempt to restore the monarchy. In 1977 Hamadi was assassinated and Col Ahmed ibn Hussein al-Ghashmi, another member of the Military Command Council which Hamadi had set up in 1974, took over. In 1978 a gradual move towards a more constitutional form of government was started, with the appointment of a constituent people's assembly, the dissolution of the Military Command Council, and the installation of Ghashmi as president.

In 1978 Ghashmi was killed when a bomb exploded in a suitcase carried by an envoy from South Yemen, and Col Ali Abdullah Saleh took over as president of North Yemen. In the aftermath of Ghashmi's death, the South Yemen president Rubayi Ali was deposed and executed. Two days later the three political parties of South Yemen agreed to merge to form a ‘Marxist–Leninist vanguard party’, the Yemen Socialist Party (YSP), and Abdul Fattah Ismail became its secretary general. In December 1978 Ismail was appointed head of state but four months later resigned and went into exile in the Soviet Union USSR. He was succeeded by Ali Nasser Muhammad.

In 1979 South Yemen's neighbours became concerned when a 20-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed, allowing the USSR to station troops in the country, and three years later an aid agreement between the two countries was concluded. A subsequent aid agreement with Kuwait helped to reduce anxieties.

Two Yemens at war
War broke out again between the two Yemens after the assassination of President Ghashmi of North Yemen. The Arab League arranged a ceasefire in 1979, and for the second time the two countries agreed to unite. This time definite progress was made so that by 1983 a joint Yemen council was meeting at six-monthly intervals, and in March 1984 a joint committee on foreign policy sat for the first time in Aden.

In North Yemen President Saleh was re-elected for a further five years in 1983, and again in 1988, while in South Yemen Ali Nasser Muhammad was re-elected secretary general of the YSP and its political bureau for another five years in 1985. He soon began taking steps to remove his opponents, his personal guard killing three bureau members. This led to a short civil war and the dismissal of Ali Nasser from all his posts in the party and the government. A new administration was formed, headed by Haydar Abu Bakr al-Attas, which immediately committed itself to eventual union with North Yemen.

Unification
In January 1990 the border between the two countries was opened to allow free movement for all citizens. Unification was achieved in May 1990, with Ali Abdullah Saleh as leader of the new Republic of Yemen and San'a as its capital. A new constitution was approved in May 1991.

Renewed civil war
In the country's first free elections, in April 1993, the northern-based General People's Congress (GPC), led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, won most seats in the assembly but failed to secure an overall majority over the southern-based, ex-Marxist YSP, led by Salim al-Baidh. In October 1993 parliament elected a five-member presidential council, with Ali Abdullah Saleh as president and Salim al-Baidh as vice-president. Civil war re-erupted in April 1994 and in May al-Baidh announced South Yemen's secession from the union. In July 1994 the northern forces of President Saleh inflicted a crushing defeat on those of al-Baidh, effectively ending the nine-week civil war. In October 1994 a new coalition of the centrist GPC and the right-of-centre Islamic al-Islah party was formed, and in the same month Saleh was re-elected president. In May 1998 President Saleh appointed Abdul Ali al-Rahman al-Iryani prime minister, to head a new government.

Diplomatic relations between Yemen and the UK grew tense in 1998 and 1999 after repeated hostage-taking by Yemeni Islamic fighters and tribesmen. A Yemeni court in May 1999 sentenced three Islamic militants to death for the abduction and murder of a group of western tourists.

Yemen held in September 1999 Arabia's first direct election for a head of state and it was won by Saleh, with 96% of the vote. His GPC won a landslide victory in the 2003 assembly elections and in 2006 Saleh agreed to stand for re-election as president.

In October 2000, a terrorist suicide bomb attack on a US destroyer, USS Cole, killed 17 crew members.