The Bush administration appears to be increasingly
frustrated in winning Yemeni support for the U.S.-led war against terrorism.
U.S. officials said Yemen has become resistant to cooperation as well as
advice from the newly-arrived military trainers in the Gulf Arab country.
The officials said the slow pace of cooperation has been exacerbated by the
current bombing campaign attributed to supporters of Saudi fugitive Osama
Bin Laden.
"The Yemenis appear very cooperative when you discuss the issue at the
highest levels of government," an official said. "Then, you get down to the
brass tacks and things get very difficult. Nobody who knows the situation
believes this is cooperation."
The officials have described a state of increasing tension between the
U.S. embassy in Sanaa and the Yemeni government. They said Yemeni officials
and opposition politicians are calling on U.S. ambassador Edmund Hall to be
withdrawn from Sanaa.
Arab diplomatic sources agree. They said Yemen and the United States
engaged in a tense stalemate earlier this month when Yemeni authorities
insisted on inspecting a U.S. military plane that landed in Sanaa. The
sources said the U.S. crew refused to let Yemeni security officers on board
and Hall was called to defuse the standoff.
The United States has been installing monitoring systems in Yemeni
airports and border crossings and providing local authorities with training.
The effort is to help Yemeni officers detect suspected Al Qaida insurgents.
Earlier this month, Pentagon officials and military commanders stressed
that Sanaa and Washington have not reached any agreement that would allow
U.S. naval ships to refuel in the port of Aden. The U.S. Fifth Fleet ended
port calls in Aden after the Bin Laden bombing of the USS Cole in October
2000.
The Fifth Fleet has been in there [Aden] assessing the fuel, and people
have been looking at security," Assistant Deputy Defense Secretary Victoria
Clarke. "But I would not put the two together."
Brig. Gen. John Rosa, deputy director for current operations at the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed. He said the role of U.S. military trainers in
Yemen has yet to be defined.
"I should say; we're in the early stages," Rosa told a briefing earlier
this month. "And the training and assisting portions that I've seen had
nothing to do with refueling ships."
