<i> Perestroika </i> Travels to Arab States : North and South Yemen Agree to Merge Into One Republic

Perestroika reached the remote tip of the Arabian peninsula today when Marxist South Yemen and pro-Western North Yemen agreed to merge into a single state.

After 18 years of intermittent talks, the two countries published a draft 136-article constitution for unity. It will now be referred to their legislative bodies for endorsement.

Yemeni leaders tacitly acknowledged they had been influenced by perestroika, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s restructuring reforms.

“It comes at a time Yemeni, regional and international changes are taking place and it is inevitable that we should take an advanced unionist step,” President Ali Abdullah Saleh of North Yemen told a news conference in the South Yemeni capital.

Saleh described the agreement as a historic and long overdue move toward merging the Yemens into a republic of about 11 million--9 million in the North and 2 million in the South.

The announcement coincided with South Yemen’s celebrations of 22 years of independence from Britain.

Impoverished South Yemen, whose Marxist isolationism gained it the reputation of the Albania of the Arab world, last month introduced freedom of travel for its citizens, who can now cross freely to the more affluent North.

The two countries’ legislative bodies were given six months to ratify the draft. If endorsed in a plebiscite, a new Yemen Republic, with the northern city of San’a as its capital hoisting a single national flag, will be created.

The constitution guarantees a multiparty system, as opposed to the single party now ruling South Yemen. North Yemen has no political parties.

The republic will be headed by a five-member presidential council.