Yemen offers to strike a deal with Qaeda fighters: report

The President of Yemen said yesterday that he was willing to strike a deal with al-Qaeda if militants laid down their weapons, amid warnings that dozens of foreign fighters were streaming into the country.
Ali Abdullah Salehs offer to negotiate with members of the terror network came as officials said that several al-Qaeda operatives, including Saudis and Egyptians, were travelling from Afghanistan to join fighters in the lawless tribal lands in central and southern Yemen.
Among those said to be in hiding in the area is Anwar al-Awlaki, the influential Yemeni preacher. The US-born imam preached to two of the 9/11 bombers in California and had links to the US army psychiatrist charged with the Fort Hood shootings and the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Christmas Day flight to Detroit.
Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi, the governor of the southern Shabwa province, said: There are dozens of Saudi and Egyptian al-Qaeda militants who came. This is in addition to Yemenis who came from Maarib and Abyan [provinces] and a number of militants from Shabwa itself.
Some Yemeni officials believe that Mr al-Awlaki, a member of a powerful clan who claims not to be a direct member of al-Qaeda, may be willing to enter talks after he leapt from relative obscurity to international infamy as the bin Laden of the internet.
Authorities claimed that he was among the dead in a pre-Christmas airstrike in the south of the country, but he later spoke to a Yemeni journalist who confirmed that the radical was still alive.
A Western diplomat told The Times that intelligence agencies had long been too focused on another wanted Yemeni Islamist, Abdul Majid al-Zindani, who is now seen as an older and less influential figure, and had only recently woken up to the danger of the energetic younger imam.
A slim, bearded and bespectacled 38-year-old former civil engineer who was born in New Mexico to a Yemeni father, Mr al-Awlaki is an imam whose fluency in English and command of internet communications have made him a top recruiter for disenfranchised young Muslims in the West. Experts on jihad believe that the internet has now become a key tool for enlisting jihadists, reaching impressionable young Muslims in their homes and extending the reach of radical preachers far beyond the traditional recruiting ground of the mosque.
Dozens of Mr al-Awlakis speeches can be found on the Youtube website, referring to everything from Koranic parables to the rapper Snoop Dogg and zombies.
Mr al-Awlaki spans the traditional and the new media for disseminating the message of jihad. While serving as a preacher in San Diego in 2000, his sermons were attended by two of the men who participated in the 9/11 attacks Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar and he became a spiritual adviser to the hijackers. He later exchanged e-mails with Nidal Hasan Malik, the US Army major accused of killing 13 soldiers in a shooting spree on the military base of Fort Hood in November last year. Yemeni officials believe that he met Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, the Nigerian accused of trying to bring down a flight with explosives hidden in his underwear last month.
Mr Saleh told an Arabic television news channel that he was willing to offer al-Qaeda militants a last chance to put down their weapons and come to an accommodation, even as US special forces instructors put troops through intensive anti-terrorist training.
If al-Qaeda lay down their arms, renounce terrorism and return to wisdom, we are prepared to deal with them, the President said. They are a threat not only to Yemen but also to international peace and security.
Analysts warn that unless authorities get to grips with the growing threat of insurgency, the country risks spiralling into further chaos. (The Times)