Yemen exempts Palestinian products from customs

Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Wednesday gave instructions to his government to exempt the Palestinian products from all customs fees and to allocate some 500 university scholarships to children of Palestinian martyrs and wounded in the Yemeni universities.

In a radio and TV interview on the occasion of the 12th anniversary of reunification of Yemen, President Saleh stressed that Yemen supports the international efforts to fighting terrorism by all its forms. He indicated "we denounce all these acts regardless to its source, especially the terrorist practices conducted by the Israeli forces."

Saleh said, concerning the internal level, that all should practice democracy with the sense of committing to laws and regulations. He instructed the higher committee for elections to proceed in the preparations for the next parliamentary elections due to be held in 2003, in remarks to giving up his earlier decision to amend the constitution to change the electoral system.