Sana'a: Yemen is planning to deploy more than 100,000 soldiers to secure the first election since President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to leave office next month, Yemen's ministry of defence announced.

Judge Sabah Al Haj, who is the head of the security committee in the Supreme Commission for Election and Referendum (SCER), told 26 September weekly, the mouthpiece of the ministry of defence, that his committee that prepared a scheme to deploy 103,000 soldiers and officers to guard polling stations across the country.

The judge said that the SCER has also set up a plan to evacuate refugees from schools during the election, adding that the SCER has achieved 80 per cent of its responsibilities for the presidential election.

Yemen is due to hold the first presidential election after Saleh signed in November last year a GCC-brokered deal and transferred his powers to his deputy Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who will temporally run the troubled country until a new president is elected on February 21. Hadi is widely predicted to become Saleh's successor.

Yemen also denied that Al Qaida militants who seized a small town southeast of the capital Sana'a this week are expanding and have managed to occupy two other cities.

Colonel Amar Humoud Al Shibri, the chief security in the town of Rada, said that both the ministry of defence and interior had set up a committee designated to peacefully handle the situation in the city and to convince the militants to leave the historical city. The security official denied in a statement to the ministry of defence newspaper that militants controlled two neighbouring cities in the provinces of Ibb and Laj.

Demands

He stated that the militants' main demands were the release of fellow prisoners and declaring an Islamic emirate in the city.

Meanwhile, general Mohammad Qusi, the undersecretary of the ministry of interior, recently said that security forces besieged the town and troops were reluctant to launch a military operation in the city fearing that it could damage Al Ameria Mosque, which is regarded as an Islamic masterpiece.

Support

A government official said on yesterday that Prime Minister, Mohammad Basindwa, is going to pay a visit to Oman and Qatar, the two Gulf states that he did not visit during his regional tour this month.

The official told 26sep.net, the defence ministry news website, that Basindwa will be Doha and Muscat either by the end of February or early March to call for support for his government.