The separatists are responding by using increasingly more violent tactics, threatening to further weaken an already fragile regime that is struggling, with little success, to crush al-Qaida and avert an economic collapse.

Several activists have been killed and dozens wounded in recent clashes with security forces in the south, which until union with the north in May 1990 was the Marxist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.

Most of impoverished Yemen's oil reserves are in the south, so Saleh's northern-based regime in Sanaa is in no mood to allow the region to secede, even though the reserves are running out fast.

Diplomats say Saleh has used the proceeds from the south's oil to sustain his rule by dispensing patronage to his loyalists and tribal leaders.

Pro-independence protests have multiplied in the south as Yemen's economic woes have worsened. Water, like the oil, is a rapidly dwindling resource and is expected to run out in Sanaa, the capital, in the next few years.

Saleh, under international pressure to damp down growing unrest and focus on eliminating al-Qaida, has offered to talk with the separatists and hear their grievances.

But the government crackdown is alienating ever-larger numbers of southerners. Diplomats note that earlier offers to talk by Sanaa failed to produce concrete action that addressed the southerners' complaints that the north has seized their resources and discriminates against them.

Most of the southerners are socialists who had their own state from 1967, when the British quit the south, until the 1990 union. Their grievances aren't new. In 1994, regional friction erupted into a three-month civil war, with the south seeking secession. Saleh crushed the southerners, using overwhelming military force and Islamist fighters from the north.

They included veterans of the 1979-89 war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the forerunners of al-Qaida. Yemen is Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland.

Saleh changed the constitution, imposed absolute control over the south and disbanded its military and security forces.

The Southern Mobility Movement, one of the principal separatist factions, emerged in 2007 with protests by former military personnel dismissed by Saleh's regime.

The separatist movement remains splintered and without a coherent, unified strategy. But there is clearly a grassroots upheaval under way that could come together around some of the recognized leaders who are coming to the fore.

Among them is Tareq al-Fahdli, who comes from a former ruling family in southern Abyan province. He was an Islamist who fought in Afghanistan and joined Saleh to help crush the south in 1994. He even married into the Saleh regime.

But he became disillusioned with the regime and joined the Southern Movement in April 2009. Sanaa branded him a terrorist.

One unifying figure in the south is Ali Salim al-Bidh, a prominent figure in the People's Republic who headed the short-lived Democratic Republic of Yemen declared in the south in 1994.

Al-Bidh, who lives in exile in Austria, declared himself president of the south in 2009. Many, including Fadhli, recognize him as such. But he's in frail health and not likely to produce dynamic leadership.

Some in the south advocate something less than secession, such as a federal arrangement that gives the south greater autonomy.

They have suggested a referendum to decide the issue. Saleh's response: The civil war was the referendum.

"The longer southern frustration is allowed to persist, the greater the danger of more violent incidents," a Western diplomat observed.

Indeed, although the secessionist leaders insist the protests will remain non-violent, the number of clashes involving some groups has risen alarmingly in Dhala and Abyan provinces.

Al-Qaida has bases in these areas and connections with local tribes.

There are signs the jihadists are aligning themselves with the secessionists, presumably to exploit the unrest.

Saleh is under pressure to move decisively against the jihadists, despite his earlier dalliance with them. This is particularly true since the al-Qaida group in Yemen was linked to attacks in the United States.

Saleh's problem is that as he imposes ever-harsher measures against the separatists he risks driving them into al-Qaida's arms, something that not only threatens his regime but the West as well.

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