Yemen's Saleh stands defiant as desertions mount

President Ali Saleh Abdullah stood defiant as Yemen's elected leader in a speech to his supporters on Friday despite a growing list of desertions and mounting pressure on him to resign.

"These popular masses -- these millions -- in this square have come to say 'yes' to constitutional legitimacy," Saleh told a large crowd gathered near the presidential palace.

"These are the same masses who said 'yes' to Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2006 (elections) as president of the republic," said the suit-wearing leader in designer sunglasses, waving his right arm in the air to stress the point.

The crowd of tens of thousands, who punctuated his short speech with cheers, was "a clear message inside and outside the country," said the embattled president, who has been in power for more than 30 years.

"This is a referendum on my constitutional legitimacy," said Saleh, whose party has said the 69-year-old president should stay put until his latest seven-year term runs out in 2013.

On Friday, the Muslim day of prayers and a focus for political rallies in the Arab world, protesters swarmed to rival demonstrations in the capital of the impoverished Arabian peninsula state.

The rallies came a day after influential tribal and religious chiefs abandoned the increasingly isolated president.

Army and police were deployed in force to avoid clashes between the two sides, with several tens of thousands gathered at squares a few kilometres (miles) apart, as on previous Fridays.

There were no reports of incidents in Sanaa. But in the flashpoint city of Taez, south of the capital, regime loyalists shot and wounded eight protesters, witnesses said.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators also took the streets of southern Yemen, mainly in the port city of Aden that has long been hostile to Saleh, to demand his departure, correspondents said.

Yemen's influential tribal and religious leaders, siding with a 10-week-old uprising, urged security forces to defect and called for the "immediate" ouster of Saleh.

The president "must respond to the demands of the peaceful revolt of the youth, starting with his immediate departure and that of all his aides in the military and security apparatuses," they said after talks late on Thursday.

The meeting was headed by the chief of the Hashed tribe, to which the Saleh family belongs. It included most members of the ulema council of Muslim religious leaders in Yemen, which has a deeply tribal society.

The participants urged soldiers and police "to join the peaceful revolt," hailing the defections that have already taken place.

Saleh in his speech pointedly paid tribute to security forces who have stuck by him, urging them "not to believe the outlaws" behind the campaign to oust him.

And playing to religious sensitivities, he criticised anti-regime protesters for allowing women to take part "contrary to the Sharia" Islamic laws of sex segregation.

Meanwhile, the religious and tribal leaders, referring to a proposal from oil-rich Arab neighbours in the Gulf, rejected any initiative to defuse Yemen's crisis that does not have Saleh's departure as its starting point.

According to political sources, the opposition in parliament could ask the Gulf monarchies to set a two-week deadline for Saleh to hand over power to his deputy and a transitional government ahead of fresh elections.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch criticised the use of dozens of child soldiers in a Yemeni army division that has sided with anti-regime demonstrators in the country's often deadly political crisis.

"Child soldiers recruited by the Yemeni army are now being used by a breakaway unit to protect anti-government protesters," HRW said. Before the protests, they had been recruited to fight Shiite rebels in north Yemen.

More than 125 people have been killed in clashes between anti-Saleh protesters and security forces loyal to the president, on whom Washington has been counting to battle an Al-Qaeda wing in Yemen.