ABSTRACT
The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) has been governed by a militant, Marxist-oriented regime since June 1969. The party’s headquarters, both before and since national independence in late 1967, have always been in the South Yemen capital of Aden. A significant People’s Democratic Union achievement was the election of its new Secre-tary-General, Ali Ba Dhib, to the Yemen Socialist Party's powerful, eight-man Politburo. The transition from the Isma’il era to that of Ali Nasir has been swift, far-reaching and, in mid-1983, on-going. At the intra-regional level, the nucleus around which many of the policy matters and government activities revolved was the alliance, established in August 1981, which grouped the PDRY, Libya and Ethiopia as joint signatories to a Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation. The event of most tangible relevance to the PDRY’s pressing economic needs, however, was the third annual meeting in Aden on 6 April 1982 of the Soviet-PDRY Standing Committee on Economic Co-operation.
