Seven months after demonstrators first took to the streets in Yemen calling for democracy, opposition leaders formed a national council on Wednesday to act as a government-in-waiting, a provocative step the government condemned even before it was announced.

The council consists of 143 members recruited from a broad array of tribal sheiks, protest leaders, southern separatists, military commanders and former members of the governing party. It was created to unite a fractured opposition and reinvigorate an uprising that has ground to a virtual standstill.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in Saudi Arabia recovering from a bomb attack that left him gravely wounded, has insisted that he will return and resume power. In anticipation of the opposition’s forming a national council, the government spokesman, Abdu al-Janadi, said last week in an online posting that such a move would amount to “a declaration of war.”

“This is an action that means to create a state within a state and create civil war in Yemen,” Mr. Janadi wrote.