From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Jan 11 2010 - 12:09:14 EST
No plan to send troops to Yemen, Obama says
(AFP)
11 January 2010,
President Barack Obama says he has “no intention” of sending US troops to
Yemen and Somalia, despite growing concern over the presence of militants
there.
Obama made a fresh push for international cooperation to confront militants
in Yemen, where the top US military officer, Admiral Michael Mullen, said
sending troops was “not a possibility.”
“I never rule out any possibility in a world that is this complex... In
countries like Yemen, in countries like Somalia, I think working with
international partners is most effective at this point,” Obama said in a
People interview to be published Friday. The magazine released a transcript
Sunday.
“I have no intention of sending US boots on the ground in these regions.”
He insisted the lawless tribal belt straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border “remains the epicenter of Al-Qaeda,” but acknowledged a Yemen-based
affiliate of Osama bin Laden’s network has become “a more serious problem.”
The impoverished country’s long-standing scourge of extremism was thrown
into the spotlight after the Al-Qaeda branch claimed responsibility for a
narrowly-averted Christmas Day bombing aboard a US-bound airliner.
Recent strikes on Al-Qaeda positions in Yemen, including cruise missile
attacks, were reportedly led by the United States, which has vowed to boost
its economic and military aid to Sanaa. London and Washington have already
announced plans to fund a counter-extremism police in the country.
Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged in a CNN
interview that the United States was providing “some support” to Yemen’s
efforts to strike Al-Qaeda militants, but insisted Sanaa led the operations.
Yemen has been hostile to any US military intervention, but analysts fear
bin Laden’s ancestral homeland cannot tackle the militants on its own.
Striking a conciliatory tone, Obama said the message his administration
sends to Muslim communities around the world was “extraordinarily
important.”
“We can’t return to sort of a garrison-state notion that we’re just going to
hunker down and this is only an issue of firepower and boots on the ground,”
he added.
A thinly stretched US military has deployed large troop contingents in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
The number of US troops in Afghanistan — where Obama has vowed to focus his
war against Al-Qaeda militants who have also sought refuge in neighboring
Pakistan — is set to triple under his watch from 2008 levels, reaching some
100,000 later this year.
Washington has urged Yemen to crack down on Al-Qaeda but Sanaa already faces
a litany of challenges, including a water shortage, dwindling oil reserves,
a Shiite rebellion in the north and a movement for autonomy in the south.
Somalia is also the focus of US counterterrorism efforts, where an embattled
transitional government faces relentless attacks from extremist Shebab
militants and their Hezb al-Islam allies.
The central government asserts little control over the country located along
key shipping routes to oil fields in the Middle East, with pirates now
swarming the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
US officials have said they are seeking to boost military and intelligence
cooperation with Yemen.
General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, which oversees a
region encompassing the Middle East, the Gulf, the Horn of Africa and
Central Asia, welcomed Yemen’s desire to tackle extremists on its own.
“We would always want a host nation to deal with a problem itself. We want
to help. We’re providing assistance,” he told CNN after returning from a
trip to Yemen during which he held talks with President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Petraeus said Washington planned to more than double its economic aid to
Yemen this year to 150 million dollars or more, up from 70 million last
year. But US officials have insisted the total aid amount has not yet been
determined.
Though the figure pales in comparison to the billions of dollars Washington
has poured into Afghanistan, the general stressed other allies were
providing aid, including Saudi Arabia, which has reportedly allocated two
billion dollars, and the United Arab Emirates, which pledged 650 million
dollars to Sanaa.
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