Yemen's Chief-of-Staff accused western powers, as well as the Yemeni opposition, of conspiring against democracy in his country, Al Arabiya reported on Thursday.
General Yehia Mohammed Abdullah Saleh said that the west was supporting what he called "a coup" in Yemen. He added that the Gulf initiative and the power transfer plan was a Yemeni domestic affair.
General Saleh denied that any of the army officers have political ambitions.
Fresh fighting, meanwhile, erupted during the night between government troops and gunmen loyal to opposition tribal chief Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar in Sana'a northern al-Hasaba district, witnesses said Thursday.
The two sides traded machinegun and mortar fire for around two hours late on Wednesday, the witnesses said.
They said the exchanges were being directed from the tribal chief's home on the one side and the nearby ministry of the interior on the other.
Sheikh Sadiq's office told AFP that "President Ali Abdullah Saleh's forces fired mortar shells" on his house.
No casualties were immediately reported.
The two sides first clashed in May, after Saleh refused to sign a Gulf-brokered plan under which he would step down in return for immunity from prosecution for himself and his family.
Those clashes, that left 300 people dead, came to a halt when Saleh was wounded in a bomb attack on his palace on June 3 after which he was flown to Riyadh for treatment.
In September, fighting between rival army units spread across the capital prompting renewed battles between the tribesmen and government forces in al-Hasaba.
The situation calmed again when Saleh, still refusing to let go of power he has been holding to since 1978, returned to Yemen on Sept. 23.
The 69-year-old president is under growing domestic and international pressures to step down, as anti-regime protests in Yemen entered their 10th month.
In the southwest city of Taez, Yemeni security forces wounded eight people on Thursday when they opened fire to disperse a protest calling for the regime's ouster, a medic and witnesses said, after clashes rocked the capital.
"Eight people were wounded, one of them seriously," a medic at a Taez field hospital told AFP.
Police in Yemen's second largest city fired live rounds at protesters who were denouncing a bombardment on Tuesday in which seven people were killed and 145 hurt, witnesses said.
The protesters also called for President Saleh, in power since 1978, to be brought to justice.
Meanwhile, in restive southern Abyan province, two children were killed while playing with unexploded ordinance, which blew up near their home, local officials told AFP.
The four-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy were killed in the provincial capital Zinjibar, the site of fierce battles between government troops and al-Qaeda linked militants who overran the town in May.
Medical officials in the nearby town of Jaar confirmed the deaths.
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