“We can say the war is over; not stopped or in a truce,” Ali Abdullah Saleh told Al-Arabiya in an interview to be aired on Friday.
Sanaa, struggling to stabilize the country, has come under international pressure to end the northern war and focus on fighting al Qaeda, whose Yemen-based arm claimed responsibility for a failed attack on a U.S.-bound plane in December.
Western countries and neighboring Saudi Arabia fear al Qaeda is exploiting instability on multiple fronts in impoverished Yemen to launch attacks in the region and beyond.
Analysts say the truce deal between the government and rebels, called Houthis after the clan name of their leaders, is unlikely to last as it does not address the insurgents’ complaints of discrimination by Sanaa.
