| Al Qaidah Threats After US Strkies Cause UK & US to Close Embassies In Yemen. |
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SANAA, Yemen–The United States and Britain locked up their embassies in Yemen on Sunday after fresh threats from Al Qaeda, and the White House expressed alarm at the terror group's expanded reach in the poor Arab nation where an offshoot apparently ordered the Christmas Day plot against a U.S. airliner.
U.S. President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, cited "indications Al Qaeda is planning to carry out an attack against a target" in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, possibly the embassy, and estimated the group had several hundred members in Yemen.
Security reasons led Britain to act, too, and Spain has also restricted access to its embassy.
Brennan said Washington is worried about the spread of terrorism in Yemen, a U.S. ally and aid recipient, but doesn't consider the country a second front with Afghanistan and Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.
Asked whether U.S. troops might be sent to Yemen, Brennan replied: "We're not talking about that at this point at all." But he pledged to provide the Yemeni government with "the wherewithal" to take down Al Qaeda.
Some U.S. officials say privately that Yemen's location at the heart of the Arab world, its history of tribal control, poverty, corruption and an ongoing civil war could make it the crucible of a future war.
Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made a surprise visit to Yemen over the weekend. Following meetings with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Petraeus announced that Washington this year will more than double the $67 million in counterterrorism aid that it provided Yemen in 2009.
A Nigerian man, charged with trying to bomb a Detroit-bound passenger plane, is believed to have received training from the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.
U.S. officials say terrorists are seeking new places to operate, including Yemen, Somalia and Southeast Asia, in part because of pressure on their previous sanctuaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Yemen, facing a Shiite rebellion in the north and separatist protests in the south, has tightened security on its coast to stop Islamist militants infiltrating from Somalia.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and the site of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. A 2008 attack on the U.S. Embassy killed one American.
Sen. Joe Lieberman identified three instances in which terrorists or sympathizers penetrated or evaded U.S defences in 2009 – shootings at a military recruiting station and an Army base and the airline attack – and said all three were linked to Yemen.
"We've got to focus there pre-emptively, and I'm confident we will," said Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut.
The U.S. will look case by case at whether to repatriate the remaining approximately 90 Yemeni detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, Brennan said.
Seven of 42 Guantanamo detainees freed by the Obama administration were returned to Yemen, Brennan said, but doubts about the country's ability to police further freed detainees is a major obstacle to Obama's plan to shut down the facility.
