The government in Yemen has vowed that wounded President Ali Abdullah Saleh will return to his country within days.
The promise comes as thousands of demonstrators in the capital demanded he step down for good.
Mr Saleh has not been seen in public since an attack on his palace on 3 June left him with burns and shrapnel wounds, forcing him to undergo surgery in Saudi Arabia.
'The presidency has confirmed to me that the president will return within coming days,' Abdu al-Janadi, Yemen's deputy information minister told Reuters, without specifying a date.
'The president's health is improving continuously,' he said.
However, a top Saudi official earlier told AFP that Mr Saleh will not return home.
Requesting anonymity, the official said that it had not been decided where he would stay, apparently suggesting that President Saleh might eventually leave Saudi Arabia for another country.
The fate of Mr Saleh is at the centre of a political crisis that has paralysed the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state and threatened to tip it into civil war.
Months of protests against Mr Saleh culminated in open warfare in the capital last month.
In Sanaa, tens of thousands of protesters demanded Saleh give up power and be replaced by a transitional government.
'The people continue to bring down the regime,' some chanted.
Prominent figures from the al-Ahmar family, head of the powerful al-Hashed tribal confederation, have backed the protesters and joined the call for a transitional government.
Mr Saleh's other opponents include a general who turned on him.
The deadlock over Mr Saleh's future coincides with a spike in violence between central government forces, separatists and Islamists.
The violence has fed Western and Gulf fears that the country could descend into chaos and give its al-Qaeda wing a foothold next to vital oil shipping routes.
Saudi Arabia sent 600,000 barrels of oil to the southern port of Aden yesterday, as part of a grant of 3m barrels aimed at easing crippling fuel shortages.
Water and electricity are also in short supply.
Residents protest against al-Qaeda
Hundreds of residents of a southern Yemeni town in which al-Qaeda has embedded itself have called for the departure of the Islamic militants from their neighbourhood, an official said.
‘Hundreds of residents of Jaar gathered in front of the town's mosque to show their opposition to armed groups with links to Al-Qaeda,’ Mohsen Salem Said, a member of the municipal council, told AFP.
He said residents ‘demanded that these armed men leave Jaar, so it does not befallen the same fate as Zinjibar,’ a neighbouring town in Abyan province.
Hundreds of men presumed to be connected to Al-Qaeda on 29 May took control of Zinjibar after battles with the Yemeni army in which 140 people died, including about 80 soldiers.
