Abdullah Sallal; First President of North Yemen

Field Marshal Abdullah Sallal, 74, the first president of former North Yemen. Sallal had led a 1962 revolution against the rule of the Imams and proclaimed a republic in North Yemen. He was in power in Yemen in 1967 with the backing of Egyptian troops that rushed to his aid to defend the new republic against royalist forces backed by Saudi Arabia. After Cairo and Riyadh reached agreement, Sallal lived in exile in Egypt until the early 1980s, when he was invited by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to return home. In 1990, North Yemen united with former Marxist South Yemen in an uneasy merger. Several months ago, Sallal stepped in to try to mediate a political dispute that surfaced between Saleh and his estranged deputy, Vice President Ali Salem Baidh, who ruled South Yemen before the merger. But a reconciliation accord has failed to end the crisis in impoverished Yemen. In Sanaa, Yemen, on Saturday of a heart attack.