Northern Yemen Leaders Reject Cease-Fire Offer From Southern Foes

Leaders of northern Yemen on Saturday rejected a truce offer by their southern rivals, shattering hopes for a quick end to fighting that threatens to break up their 4-year-old nation.

There was no indication the northern leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was ready to halt the campaign to seize the southern capital, Aden, and reunite Yemen’s north and south by force.

The main battles Saturday appeared to be centered along the former border between conservative North Yemen and socialist South Yemen, which united in May, 1990. Both sides claimed to have each other’s forces on the run.

All-out war erupted May 5 after months of skirmishes and feuding over the slow pace of integrating the impoverished nation of 14 million on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Unification was popular with Yemen’s people, but southern leader Ali Salem Beidh in August stalked out of Sana, the northern capital, accusing Saleh of trying to dominate the south.

The south offered a truce in a broadcast Friday on Aden Radio. It called for an immediate cease-fire, withdrawal to prewar positions, a prisoner release, a national unity government and compensation for civilian losses.

An official of the northern government rejected the offer as an attempt to shield southern leaders, the northern-controlled news agency Saba reported.

“These elements must surrender for a fair trial or leave the country,” said the official, who was not identified by name.

Meanwhile, hundreds of destitute Somali refugees were reported killed when their camp on the southern Yemeni coast was caught in cross-fire between the two sides.

“Dogs are eating the bodies of our dead and we are unable to bury them,” Bashir Ahmad, a 26-year-old graduate in medicine from Mogadishu University, told Reuters news agency.

Refugees clustered on a sandy patch of ground a few miles from the Al Koud camp northeast of Aden swarmed around reporters to tell of 400 to 450 people who were killed on the first day of the war between north and south.

In the continuing fighting, northern forces claimed new battlefield victories.

They said their southward push was gaining strength after they overran the strategic town of Ad Dali, 80 miles north of Aden, a port city on the Red Sea.

Capt. Hossein Aziz, a spokesman for the northern Defense Ministry, said Friday in Sana that Saleh’s troops were within sight of Aden. He said they captured Little Aden across the harbor from the southern capital.

Aden is the center of Yemen’s 350,000-barrel-a-day oil industry and the site of its only oil refinery. Whoever holds Aden and nearby oil fields would control most of Yemen’s export income and its economic future.

The north has been boasting for a week that Aden was about to fall, but it has not. The Soviet-trained southern forces claim they have repulsed the latest offensive.

Most claims are impossible to verify. Independent observers and foreign reporters have almost no access to the front lines.