Yemen warns of hundreds more Qaida operatives in country and asks for help: report

Yemen has warned of hundreds more militants on its soil planning to attack the west and appealed for help to forestall more terror attempts after the failed plot to blow up a transatlantic flight over Detroit.
The warning comes as President Obama said a "systemic failure" had taken place. He interrupted his vacation in Hawaii yesterday to describe the lapse in intelligence as "totally unacceptable".
"When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable," he said last night.
Yemen's foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, told the BBC up to 300 al-Qaida-backed extremists were waiting to follow the example of Abdulmutallab, who obtained enough explosive in Yemen to have blown a large hole in the aircraft.
"Of course there are a number of al-Qaida operatives in Yemen and some of their leaders. We realise this danger. They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit ... I can't give you exact figures. There are maybe hundreds of them – 200, 300," he said. The minister added that Britain, the US and other western nations could do "a lot" to improve Yemen's response to militants on its own soil and it was the "responsibility" of developed countries with strong intelligence capabilities to warn Yemen about the movements of terror suspects.
"We have to expand our counter-terrorism units and this means providing them with the necessary training, military equipment, ways of transportation – we are very short of helicopters," he said. He added that the US, UK and EU could do a lot more. "There is support but I must say it is inadequate."
Yemen's appeal came as its government confirmed that Abdulmutallab visited the country twice in recent years – for several months in 2005 and again from August until shortly before his failed attempt to down the airliner on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab has told FBI interrogators that he was trained in Yemen by al-Qaida.
Abdulmutallab described Yemen as "great" in internet postings after visiting the country for the first time to learn Arabic while he was a boarder at an elite international school in west Africa.