Yemen's opposition spokesman, Mohammed Qahtan, has urged the United Nations to break the political deadlock in Yemen, scoffing at a statement from President Ali Abdullah Saleh that he was ready to step down.
The news comes after claims by high-ranking Yemeni officials that President Saleh would not be leaving office any time soon.
Mr. Qahtan said regional efforts to resolve the months-long political crisis in Yemen had reached a deadlock.
The UN Security Council, would be " more effective" in ending the crisis and serve as a "continuation of the regional efforts" already underway, he told AFP in a telephone interview.
Mr. Qahtan was speaking ahead of Tuesday's planned report to the UN by Yemen envoy Jamal Benomar on his failure to clinch agreement on a Gulf Cooperation Council deal for a transition of power in Yemen.
In a recent report by the New York Times, two high-ranking Yemeni officials claim Yemen's foreign minster had traveled to the United Arab Emirates on Sunday to offter the council a new plan calling for Mr. Saleh to remain in office until elections next year.
In a televised speech on Saturday, Saleh said: "I don't want power and I will give it up in the coming days."
The opposition dismissed his declaration as a sham, citing numerous other occasions when Saleh said he would resign but later refused to do so.
"Very simply, Saleh does not want to resign from power," Qahtan said, charging that the speech was merely a ploy to divert attention from Benomar's report to the UN.
"There is nothing new... Saleh will never hand over power willingly," he said.
