Yemen sinks into new crisis after rebels reject new Prime Minister

Yemeni Shiite rebels dug in their heels Wednesday after rejecting the newly named premier, stirring fears of further violence as al Qaeda and tribes accused security forces of favouring the insurgents. With confusion reigning in rebel-controlled Sanaa, suspected militants with al Qaeda, which has vowed to battle the rebels, killed 10 policemen in central Yemen.
President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi late Tuesday named his chief of staff Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak as the new prime minister, after a UN-brokered peace deal agreed on September 21, the day the Huthi rebels overran the capital unopposed. The accord provided for a rebel withdrawal from Sanaa once a neutral premier was named, for their disarmament and for the political transition to be revitalised.
But the rebels swiftly condemned Bin Mubarak's appointment as against the "will of the nation" and "at the behest of outside forces", an apparent reference to US and Saudi influence. "This decision has violated all the principles agreed upon by all parties," the rebels, officially known as Ansarullah, said in a statement on Wednesday. They said the move did not reflect a Yemeni agreement "as much as it was a foreign decision".
Hadi received the American and Saudi envoys shortly after he and his advisers discussed the overdue appointment of a new premier, an AFP correspondent said. The rebel leader, Abdulmalik al-Huthi, has yet to comment on the nomination. "Issues were not settled beforehand," one Western diplomat said on Wednesday, adding that the General People's Congress of ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh also rejected the appointment.
A GPC statement urged Hadi to reconsider the "non-consensual decision" and propose a "consensual alternative", accusing Bin Mubarak of "never being neutral or independent". Five candidates had been shortlisted out of 21 candidates, before Hadi reduced the number to three during a meeting with seven advisers, including a rebel representative who left the gathering in protest.
A Hadi aide accused the rebels of rejecting the decision because "they do not want to keep their commitments" under the peace deal. Since swooping on Sanaa, the rebels have been continuously tightening their grip on the city while also looking to expand their control eastwards to oilfields and to the strategic south-western strait of Bab el-Mandab. Foes of the Huthi rebels accuse them of taking orders from Iran and rejecting Bin Mubarak because of his political past as a student at Baghdad University, where he was in Saddam Hussein's Baath party.