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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Hezbollah denies support for Yemen's Houthis |
| 2009-12-09 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Shiite group Hezbollah has denied rumors that Ali Salem al-Beidh, the former president of South Yemen, made a secret visit to Beirut to gather support for Yemen's Houthi rebels in an effort to weaken Yemen's central government. "These rumors are misleading, fake and baseless," Ibrahim Moussawi, head of Hezbollah's press unit said in a phone call to Al Arabiya.net. "Hezbollah has nothing whatsoever to do with Houthis" Moussawi said, adding that the issue with the Houthis in Yemen "can only be solved though dialogue and not war." Lebanese sources however told Al Arabiya.net, that al-Beidh last October made a secret visit to the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and attempted to make contact with key players in Hezbollah in order to obtain support for the Houthis. Reportedly al-Beidh was told that senior figures in the Shiite group did now wish to meet with him or in any way be associated with the current situation in Yemen. But according to the same sources, Hezbollah is against the Yemeni government's handling of the Houthi rebels despite rejecting to be connected to the situation or the secession movement in any way. Yemeni government forces launched an all-out offensive against Shiite Houthi rebels in the north of the Arabian Peninsula country on Aug. 11 in an attempt to end a five-year rebellion. But the conflict took a new twist in early November when neighboring Saudi Arabia joined the fight against the rebels after accusing them of infiltrating its southern borders. The Houthis complain of being marginalized and oppressed by the government, which accuses them of seeking to reinstate a form of clerical rule that ended in a republican coup in 1962. The rebels deny the claim. Aid agencies estimate that the violence has caused 150,000 people in northern Yemen to flee their homes in the five years since the fighting first broke out. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 So if it isn't Hezbollah, and (by extension) it's not Iran, and the Saudis aren't supporting them themselves... are they managing this rebellion with no visible means of support? And doing such a good job that the Saudis are having to dismiss military units and bring in special forces from elsewhere to staunch the leaking? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-12-09 17:13 |