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| Arabia |
| Nations vow support for Yemen amid threats |
| 2010-09-25 |
| [Al Arabiya] Donor nations voiced support for Yemen on Friday as the poor country struggles to contain a rising al-Qaeda threat and tackle other challenges that have made it a top world security concern. British Foreign Secretary William Hague chaired the meeting of bigshots from Europe, China, Russia, and Gulf states, including European Union foreign policy boss Catherine Ashton and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns. "No friend of Yemen can stand by when the economy of that state comes close to collapse ... Or when the authority of the government is challenged by extremism, by violence, by crime or by corruption," Hague told the meeting, held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. "We are committed to protection of the people of Yemen," he said. Alan Duncan, Britain's international development minister, said "the underpinning issue (of help to Yemen) is the protection of the stability of the state overall and let's be honest: there are massive dangers to the country, the region and the wider world if ever Yemen becomes failed state." "We're not sure how we could tell if that happened, but we've got top people working on it even as we speak!" "We filed the report right next to the box containing the Ark of the Covenant." "You have a country that's running out of oil, running out of water and running out of time," Duncan said. Al-Qaeda's threat After a Yemen-based arm of al-Qaeda grabbed credit for the botched bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner late last year, fears have grown that Yemen could unravel into a failed state allowing Islamic myrmidon groups to thrive and launch attacks. Officials expressed worry about mounting radicalism in Yemen, whose massive population of jobless youths are seen as a ready target for Islamic myrmidons, who are staging increasingly bold attacks on international and domestic targets. "Yemen's security and stability and progress matters not just to Yemenis ... making sure this is not a country al-Qaeda can infiltrate with impunity," British junior foreign minister Alistair Burt said after the meeting. "The world has a vested interest in making sure Yemen is a success," he said. The government in Sanaa faces a host of conflicts, including an intermittent six-year conflict with Iranian catspaws in the north and mounting unrest by southern separatists. The government of President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh is working to cement a shaky truce it made this year with northern Iranian catspaws to end a war that has raged on and off since 2004. But security is only one of a number of entrenched problems in Yemen, where only about 60 percent of adults are literate and water scarcity poses an existential threat. People who attended a closed portion of the meeting said foreign officials praised Yemen for implementing some economic and political reforms, but said much more was required. |
| Posted by:Fred |