INTERVIEW-Yemen will talk to rebels if they stop fighting
08 May 2007 18:13:00 GMT Source: Reuters
By Lin Noueihed
SANAA, May 8 (Reuters) - Yemen will consider talks with Shi'ite Muslim rebels who have been fighting government forces in the north since early this year if they lay down their guns first, the foreign minister said on Tuesday.
"If they really want to start a dialogue, they should stop fighting and then call for dialogue and the Yemeni government will respond," Abubakr al-Qirbi told Reuters. "They should not call for dialogue while they are still fighting."
Yahya al-Houthi, the exiled brother of rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, whose group is fighting the government in the northern province of Saada, said in a statement earlier this week the rebels were ready to cease fire and return to dialogue provided the army returned to its pre-war positions.
Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes in the latest bout of a conflict that has raged on and off since 2004. The flare-up began when the rebels attacked government forces who set up a checkpoint deeper inside Saada.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh has repeatedly said there is no room for dialogue and urged the rebels to surrender.
Qirbi said previous government efforts to talk to the rebels, members of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam, had failed.
"From 2004, the government of Yemen used dialogue, tried to rebuild the area and used all means to address the root causes of the issue," he said.
"But dialogue got the government nowhere as these people do not seem to understand that violence only brings violence. If they want to fight America and Israel it cannot happen in Yemen."
FOREIGN BACKING
In 2006, Saleh freed more than 600 of Houthi's followers in an amnesty but in January he ordered the army to crack down on the rebels, who oppose Yemen's close alliance with the United States and who the government says want to return to a form of religious rule prevalent in Yemen until 1962.
The defunct Yemeni Imamate is different to the Islamic Republic established in Iran. The Zaydi sect is the closest of all the Shi'ite sects to mainstream Sunni Islam.
Sunni Muslims make up most of Yemen's 19 million population, and most of the rest are Zaydis.
If the rebels want political change, they should pursue it through the political system, not violence, Qirbi said. The rebels say their mountainous region, like many parts of Yemen, has been neglected. Western diplomats say they may want more autonomy.
Qirbi said it was not clear what the rebels wanted, but there was evidence they were receiving foreign backing.
"The evidence that there is foreign backing is the means available to these people. They could not get these arms and communications without foreign backing," he said.
"We think this backing has come from several Shi'ite sources, not necessarily Iran's government. Houthi's travels to Libya have also given the impression that Libya is involved."
It was not immediately possible to get rebel comment.
Yemen, the ancestral home of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism after the Sept. 11 2001 attacks in the United States.
Houthi's supporters are not linked to al Qaeda, which follows a strict brand of Sunni Islam, but Yemeni Islamists attacked the USS Cole in 2000 and a French tanker in 2001.
More than 100 Yemenis remain in the U.S.-run detention camp at Guantanamo Bay but they are due to be released and Qirbi said Yemen was ready to deal with them according to its own law.
"The Yemeni situation is better than many countries in the region when it comes to terrorism but that does not mean that we have stamped out all terrorists," he said. "The government must continue its efforts to avert terrorist attacks." (Additional reporting by Mohammed Ghobari)
