SANAA — Yemen's veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh said he will head to the United States for medical treatment as he asked his people for forgiveness in a farewell speech delivered as he left Sanaa Sunday.
"I will go to the United States for treatment and will then return as head of the General People's Congress (GPC) party," Saleh said in a televised speech.
"I ask for forgiveness from all my people, men and women, for any shortcomings during my 33-year-long rule," he added.
An official close to the presidency told AFP that "the Yemeni president left Sanaa," without specifying Saleh's destination.
His departure came a day after parliament adopted a law giving Saleh "complete" immunity from prosecution in return for stepping down under a transition deal brokered by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.
The immunity law has drawn wide condemnation from young protesters, who have seen hundreds of their compatriots killed by Saleh's security forces and loyalists since the uprising against his rule broke out in January 2011.
It has also been strongly criticised by Western rights groups and the United Nations.
Saleh in his farewell speech defended the law, saying that those who have benefited from it are "all those who have worked with the president during a 33-year-long rule."
"If there had been mistakes, then they were unintentional as the president has immunity from his own people to whom he had dedicated his life to serve for this nation," Saleh said as he called for "reconciliation" in the country.
"The poor youths (who have continued) sit-ins for 11 months, go back to your homes and families and open up a new page with the new leadership. I feel sorry for you," Saleh said.
Parliament on Saturday also adopted a law approving Saleh's long-time deputy, Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, who appeared sitting next to the president during the speech, as the consensus candidate in the election for Saleh's successor, due to be held on 21 February.
After that date, Hadi is to be "handed over the presidential palace while Ali Abdullah Saleh will take his bag, bid farewell, and leave to his own home," the Saba news agency quoted the veteran president as saying.
"I announce from here, out of respect and appreciation for Hadi's stances and efforts, his promotion to the rank of marshal," Saleh said.
"I call onto all the people of the nation to to cooperate with him (Hadi) and with the unity government to correct and rebuild what has been destroyed during the past" year, the 69-year-old said.
"I thank our people men and women for their honest stances and for all they have tolerated during 11 months of hunger, power cuts, and a lack of services as well as many other things. I salute these steadfast and heroic people," he added.
A senior official of Saleh's GPC party, Sultan al-Barakani, said last week that the president, who remains in office on an honorary basis, would travel abroad.
"In the coming days, he will visit the sultanate of Oman and then Ethiopia before travelling to New York for treatment" for wounds he sustained in a bombing at the presidential palace last June, the official told AFP.
"Once he has completed his treatment in New York, he will return to Yemen to continue leading the party."
Diplomats in Sanaa said on Sunday that Saleh's eldest son Ahmed — who commands the feared Republican Guard — was "already in Oman" to prepare for his father's visit.
Ali Salem al-Baidh, a former vice-president and leader of the Socialist Party in Yemen, took refuge in neighbouring Oman after Saleh's troops crushed a secession attempt by the south in 1994.
He was forced to refrain from politics and from making any political statements during his stay in the sultanate.
