YEMEN - Profile - Ali Abdullah Saleh (Al Ahmar).

Access to President Saleh is crucial for companies that want to be successful in Yemen. For example, Hunt, CanOxy and TotalFinaElf have managed to get Saleh to intervene personally to improve their E&P terms with the oil ministry. It is not easy to have access to Saleh, however. Getting the right man for the introduction and the man who knows when Saleh is in the best of his moods can be expensive. It was thanks to a meeting with Saleh that Total's CEO got his LNG project moving.

Saleh is simple but shrewd. A hard-headed pragmatist, his main weakness is a combination of good ideas and lobbying by certain leaders of the Hashed tribes under Speaker and head of the Islamist/conservative Islah Party, Shaikh Abdullah Al Ahmar (see his profile in OOD Vol. 31, June 24, 1996; and survey of the ruling structure in Fate of the Arabian Peninsula Vol. 36, Aug. 17, 1998).

In October 1999 Saleh embarked on his new five-year term in the presidency as he vowed at a swearing-in ceremony to fight corruption and chaos. He told parliament: "There is no value to any laws if they are not implemented". He won "96.3%" of the votes on Sept. 25 in Yemen's first direct presidential election, having been in the top post since 1978. Saleh himself had chosen his only challenger, Najib Qahtan Al Shaabi, a member of Saleh's ruling General People's Congress (GPC) and son of a former South Yemeni prime minister. The opposition Yemen Socialist Party (YSP), which boycotted the polls, said the election was a sham. Nevertheless, Saleh enjoys wide support and politically he is strong at present.

On May 22, 2001, Sanaa celebrated eleven years of Yemen's unification. In late 2000 Saleh, getting stronger thanks to high oil prices, boosted his political position by replacing many civilian and military governments with younger, more loyal figures, including his son Ahmad Ali who became chief of the special forces and his brother Tariq who was made commander of the elite presidential Republican Guard. To secure a badly needed $700m World Bank loan, he has ordered bold reforms - the direct responsibility of then Prime Minister Abdel Karim Al Iryani.

(Two of the reforms on which the World Bank has insisted were a ban on carrying arms and a curb on the consumption of qat, a mildly narcotic leaf which is chewed for hours. It is said there are about 60m guns in Yemen, mostly Kalashnikovs, in civilian hands - kept mainly by the highland tribes in the north who have kidnapped almost 200 foreigners since 1993. The cultivation of qat - the qat industry accounting for about 50% of the country's GDP of $5.7 bn- demands vast quantities of water. Yemen is desperately short of drinking water and water is needed to grow fruit and vegetables. Yemen has the fastest depletion of aquifers in the world, with the water table in Sanaa dropping by 5-7 metres per annum and likely to be exhausted by 2010).

Saleh, a Zaidi Shiite of the northern Hashed tribes, was born in the town of Al Ahmar in 1942. With less than elementary education, he joined the North Yemeni armed forces at an early age and became a corporal. He was promoted by his tribal leaders in 1977 when the then president of North Yemen, Ahmad Al Ghashmi - an ally of one Hashed tribe - appointed him as military governor of Taiz. After Ghashmi's assassination on June 24, 1978, Saleh was made a member of the four-man provisional council of the presidency.

On July 17, 1978, Saleh became president of the republic, chief of staff and commander in chief of the armed forces - having been unusually promoted to the rank of major and then colonel. Later he became a general. In December 1997, parliament approved his promotion to field marshal and a statement said this was "in recognition of his historical role and the political, economic and social achievements" in the course of his mandate. Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansur Hadi was promoted from lieutenant general to general. Saleh now is the highest ranking military officer in Yemen.

On Aug.10, 1978, as president, Saleh ordered the execution of 30 officers on the charge of conspiracy to topple his regime, and he has since faced several assassination and coup attempts. He became president of unified Yemen on May 22, 1990, South Yemen's Marxist regime of Aden having merged with the conservative regime of Sanaa. He backed Saddam Hussein who invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Many things happened after the merger, including complex intrigues both in the north and in the south, plus secession by the southern leaders who had become bold after big oil discoveries in Masila. Saleh fought the latter head on - the May-July 1994 war was devastating - until he defeated them. But Saleh gave strict orders for his troops not to target any of the oil installations in the country. He re-emerged as a stronger ruler of all Yemen. The border dispute with Saudi Arabia and various other developments after the war did not shake a stubborn Saleh who, nevertheless, proved to be an excellent diplomat.

Saleh had founded the General People's Congress (GPC), the ruling political party, before the Yemeni unification. In the April 27, 1997, general elections, the first since the May-July 1994 war, the GPC scored a sweeping victory. Out of a total of 301 parliamentary seats, the GPC won 187 and Al Islah got 53. Most of the independent figures who won 39 seats were allied to the GPC in one way or another. This victory gave Saleh a free rein to push ahead with economic reform and in May a new government was formed mostly of GPC members headed by Prime Minister Faraj Bin Said Bin Ghanem (an independent Hadhrami economist and Yemen's representative at the UN in Geneva since 1994).

Al Islah, previously in government, had tried to prevent implementation of economic reforms agreed to in 1995 agreements with the World Bank and IMF, because of their social cost. But Al Islah was heavily defeated in the April elections and the economy was the priority for Ghanem, a former planning and development minister. Al Islah had only reluctantly approved the first two waves of economic reforms, a source of friction with its coalition partner. The measures included reduced subsidies on oil and electricity, and increased tariffs on services such as telecommunications and power. The next round of reforms was to eradicate subsidies on wheat and flour and to reduce the size of the public service, measures denounced by Al Islah during the election campaign. But Ghanem resigned in late April 1998, after a month's absence, because Saleh did not give him sufficient power. On May 16, Iryani formed a new cabinet.

Under Saleh are some of the most educated technocrats in the Arab world. Saleh has numerous half-brothers. He has more than one wife and has a big number of children. To consolidate his control, Saleh has placed loyal relatives around him. His brother, Lt. Col. Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, has headed his special security force and played a major role in the May-July 1994 as commander of a key force against the southerners. Gen. Abdullah Hussein Al Bashiri, a relative, is head of the presidential office and one of the negotiators with Saudi Arabia.

US support has been vital for Saleh, not only in getting the Saudis to sign a compromise border deal on June 12, 2000, but also in enhancing his position at home and abroad and in securing foreign aid to and investment for Yemen. He visited Washington and met with President Clinton on April 4 this year. Subsequently it was said Saleh and Clinton discussed granting the US 5th Fleet the right to use the port of Aden and boosting US-Yemeni military co-operation.

Military co-operation arrangements had been discussed in Sanaa in December 1999 during the visit to Sanaa of Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of the US forces in the Middle East. Some friction arose between Sanaa and Washington after the bombing of the USS Cole in Aden port in October 2000, after the violence broke out in the Palestinian controlled territories. Islamists close to Osama Bin Ladin, the denationalised Saudi now living under Taliban protection in Afghanistan, were blamed. Frictions eased after Sanaa began extending full co-operation in the US investigation of the bombing.

Another reason for Saleh's relatively good image in the US is his treatment of Yemeni Jews. Saleh eased travel rules for Israelis of Yemeni origin, who in March and April 2000 were allowed to visit areas in Yemen where Jews once lived. Former US president Clinton publicly commended Saleh for this when they met. But later Saleh explained to the Yemeni press that the government dealt with the Jewish tourists not as Israelis but as "Yemenis living abroad".