U.S., Yemen to step up al Qaeda fight

SANAA, Yemen — The United States and Yemen pledged Tuesday to step up high-level cooperation in the fight against al Qaeda as government forces punched their way into the heart of a city long held by militants in the Arab nation’s lawless south.

The terror network has taken advantage of the country’s political turmoil of the past year to capture several southern areas, and the Americans are eager to coordinate efforts with the Yemenis to push them back.

An al Qaeda settled and safe in the remote interior of southern Yemen would allow its militants to plan and execute more attacks on Western interests, taking advantage of proximity to strategic shipping lanes in the Red and Arabian seas through which much of the West’s energy supplies need to pass. It also allows them a foothold near fellow al Qaeda militants across the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa.

FBI Director Robert Mueller was in the Yemeni capital Tuesday and met for 45 minutes with President Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi, to discuss the campaign against al Qaeda and show political support for the nation’s new leader.

Hadi stressed to Mueller the importance of U.S support for the campaign against al Qaeda, presidential spokesman Yahya alArasi said. Mueller later discussed bolstering the Yemeni coast guard and the nations’ cooperation on counterterrorism, a government statement said.

The statement didn’t elaborate, but Yemeni military and security officials familiar with the contents of Mueller’s talks said Mueller told his Yemeni hosts that Washington intended to continue and maybe increase the use of drones to attack militants and to expand monitoring of Yemen’s porous coastline.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the talks, said the United States currently has three warships, while France and Russia each have one deployed off Yemen’s Red and Arabian sea shores to prevent militants from targeting commercial vessels.

The FBI is the U.S. government’s main domestic law enforcement agency, but it has liaison offices in countries around the world. The United States has over the years provided millions of dollars for equipment and training to improve the capabilities of the Yemeni forces. It says al Qaeda’s Yemen branch is the terror network’s most dangerous.

Meanwhile, Yemeni government forces entered the center of Abyan’s provincial capital of Zinjibar, a southern city held by al Qaeda since last year, after a fierce, six-hour battle that ended early Tuesday. Al Qaeda militants seized Zinjibar last May.