South Yemen leader pulls out of reconciliation talks

[World News Headlines -]

A south Yemeni separatist leader on Wednesday walked out of national reconciliation talks meant chart a new constitution for U.S.-allied Yemen, setting back efforts to keep the fragile country together. The move could prompt other politicians to quit the talks and deepen instability in a country afflicted by Sunni Islamist militants, Shi'ite Muslim rebels and a southern separatists. The Conference of National Reconciliation, launched in March as part of a 2011 Gulf-brokered power transfer deal that eased long-serving President Ali Abdullah Saleh out of office, has been struggling with demands by southern separatists to restore South Yemen, which merged with North Yemen in 1990. "The decision to withdraw from the talks came after we exhausted all political efforts to reach a just solution for the southern question," Mohammed Ali Ahmed, a former South Yemen interior minister who returned from exile in London in March 2012, told a news conference in Sanaa.

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