Yemen's president, who is facing protestors' calls to step down after three decades in power, said on Wednesday that people with "foreign agendas" were trying to spread chaos across the region.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a US ally against a resurgent wing of al-Qaeda in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, has tried to stave off turmoil by offering to step down when his term ends in 2013, but has so far failed to quell increasingly violent protests.
"There are plans to try and sink the region into a fervour of chaos and violence, and they have targeted the security of the region and stability of our countries," Saleh was quoted as saying in a phone call to Bahrain's king to express support for the Gulf Arab kingdom, which is also facing intensifying protests.
"The people creating these works of chaos and sabotage are only implementing suspicious foreign agendas," he said, according to Yemen''s state news agency, without identifying any particular group.
Yemen's opposition coalition accepted an invitation from Saleh for national dialogue last week, but anti-government protests now in their third week have grown increasingly strident in their calls for Saleh to resign.
