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Yemenite opposition leader assassinated

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE

Saturday, April 10, 1999

NICOSIA [MENL] -- Yemen has been rocked by the assassination of a leading opposition politician.

Authorities said they did not know whether the assassination of Mohammed Aziz Abu Nashtan, a leader of the opposition Yemen Socialist Party, was politically motivated.

Abu Nashtan was shot dead at a market north of the capital Sanaa on Wednesday.

The YSP, Yemen's biggest opposition party, ruled Marxist south Yemen before the merger with conservative north Yemen in 1990. The party, which initially joined a coalition government headed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh's General Peoples Congress, later led a separatist attempt in 1994. In 1997, the YSP boycotted the country's parliamentary elections.

In an unrelated development, the Czech aircraft company Aero Vodochody said that it intends to sell Yemen 12 L-39C trainers, correcting reports that Prague would sell the L-159 to Sanaa.

The company would not say how much the deal is worth. Earlier, the Yemen Times said the government would purchase the L-159 fighters.

Aero Vodochody said there are no concrete plans to purchase the L-159's.

Saturday, April 10, 1999


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