6 Al-Qaeda militants killed in Yemen's Abyan

By Fatik al-Rodaini

SANA'A, April 18, 2012- At least 6 Al-Qaeda militants were killed on Wednesday along with a civilian in Yemen's southern province of Abyan where swaths of towns are controlled by the militant group, Ansar al-Sharia, an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

Yemen's Defense Ministry said that two air strikes hit Lawder city, a Yemen's strategically important town located around 150 kilometers North-East of Zinjibar, the capital of the Southern province of Abyan, where fierce clashes took place between militants linked to al-Qaeda and Yemeni troops backed by tribesmen one week ago.

Witnesses reported that one of the victims was a civilian and two more people remained wounded during a mortar shelling by government troops that took place at the same time as the air strikes.

According to analysts, al-Qaeda in Yemen is considered a serious and growing threat for Yemeni government and for the United States.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi vowed to fight al Qaeda and its affiliates when he took office earlier this year after his predecessor quit under pressure from anti-government protesters and foreign powers anxious to halt a slide into mayhem.

Militants have since stepped up their operations against the army, carrying out a string of deadly attacks that have cast a long shadow over the country’s first month’s post-Ali Abdullah Saleh.

In return, the Yemeni air force has launched air strikes on suspected militant strongholds and the United States has joined in with drones.

The United States and Saudi Arabia – both targets of al Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing – fear Yemen is becoming a major front in its campaign against the militant network, which has been dealt a number of blows over the past year, not least the killing of its founder and leader Osama bin Laden.

UN supports Yemen's President Hadi

By Fatik al-Rodaini

SANA'A, April 18, 2012- Yemen's President Abdu Rabo Mansor Hadi met on Wednesday the UN secretary general's envoy to Yemen, Jamal bin Omar, who asserted the support of international community to solve Yemeni crisis based on the Gulf initiative and its implementation.

"The international community stands by President Hadi, in order to implement the political settlement in Yemen, according to the Gulf initiative and the resolution 2014," Bin Omar said after his meeting with president Hadi.

The UN envoy's visit comes as part of the United Nation's follow-up on the implementation of the historic deal in Yemen which is based on the Gulf initiative and its implementation," Saba said.

Bin Omar confirmed that his visit aims to get acquainted with the situation in Yemen and to hold talks with the President, government and all political parties over making progress in the political process.

"The arrangement of the comprehensive national dialogue would be touched on in the talks", he said. It is an important issue required planning, wide participation and consultations and the UN would support it strongly.

The UN envoy indicated to other issues would be dealt with in the visit topped by the humanitarian and economic situations, calling on donor countries to redouble their efforts to support the Yemeni economy.

Kuwaiti Emir grants $6 mln and AFECD $65 mln to Yemen

MARRAKECH, April 17 (Saba) - Yemen and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFECD) signed in Marrakech, Morocco, a financing agreement worth $65 million.

The agreement's amount will be dedicated to contribute to financing a wind power generation project in Mocha district with a capacity of 60 MW to enhance the power generation capacities in Yemen.

The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the 41 annual meetings of the Arab financial authorities and agencies by Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Mohammad al-Sa'adi AFECD Director General and Chairman Abdullatif Al Hamad.

Moreover, the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation and Kuwait Fund for Economic Development (KFED) Director General Abdulwahab Al-Bader signed an agreement of the grant of Kuwaiti Emir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah estimated to be $6 million to Yemen.

The Kuwaiti Emir's grant dedicated to support "the decent life program to help Muslim countries in their efforts to achieve food security aims to finance small and smaller enterprises in fields of food production and providing production support services.

Yemen's Cabinet forms independent national authority for human rights

By Fatik al-Rodaini

SANA'A, April 17, 2012- Yemen's Cabinet approved on Tuesday the formation of a ministerial committee to draft a law on establishing an independent national authority for human rights.

In a meeting headed by Prime Minister Mohammed Salem Basindwa, the government authorized the committee to form an assistant technical team provided that representatives of the concerned civil society organizations to be involved in the team.

The formation of the committee came according to a suggestion presented by Yemen's Human Right Minister, Hooria Mashhour, on the institutional and legal frameworks and the measures required to form the authority.

The establishment of authority is in pursuance to the recommendations of the Human Rights Council (HRC) to establish such authority in accordance with the Paris Principles.

Bid Laden family to be deported

April 17, 2012

OSAMA bin Laden's family is expected to be deported from Pakistan today, their lawyer and officials have said.

Bin Laden's three widows and their children will be deported to Saudi Arabia 11 months after the US raid that killed the al-Qaida leader.

The bin Laden family was detained by the Pakistani authorities after the US Navy SEAL operation in the garrison town of Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, last May.

The news came as Washington and Islamabad try to patch up their relationship, which was badly damaged by the revelation that the world's most wanted man was living a stone's throw from Pakistan's elite military academy.

Two weeks ago a court sentenced the widows and two of bin Laden's older daughters to 45 days' detention on charges of illegal entry and residency in Pakistan and ordered their deportation as soon as possible.

They were due to complete the sentence, served in an Islamabad villa designated by authorities as a "sub-jail", yesterday, as it officially began when they were formally arrested on the charges on March 3.

"They will go tonight or tomorrow early in the morning. After 12 tonight they can be deported any time," their lawyer Muhammad Aamir said yesterday.

Mr Aamir said the family - who number 12, including bin Laden's three widows, eight children and one grandchild - would probably initially go to Saudi Arabia.

He said bin Laden's youngest and reportedly favourite wife, Amal Abdulfattah, who is Yemeni, may be sent to Yemen afterwards with her five children.

A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed that the family was expected to be deported "sometime around midnight" and said "most likely they would be flown to Saudi Arabia."

A number of Saudi diplomats have visited Pakistan in recent weeks to work out the details of the deportation, sources say.

The discovery of bid Laden in Abbottabad dealt a massive blow to US-Pakistan relations and led to accusations of Pakistani complicity or incompetence.

Ms Abdulfattah, 30, told Pakistani interrogators bin Laden had fathered four children while he hid out in Pakistan, according to a police report.

After fleeing Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden moved his family around Pakistan before settling in a three-storey house inside a walled compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad in 2005.

According to the police report, the family movements while they were on the run were organised by "Ibrahim and Abrar", two Pakistanis given responsibility for the task by members of al-Qaida.

Both the men were killed during the raid on Abbottabad and had been living in the same compound, along with Ibrahim's wife, Bushra, and bin Laden's son, Khalid.

In February the Pakistani authorities, reluctant for the Abbottabad house to become a shrine to the dead terror leader, used bulldozers to raze the building to the ground.

The continued detention of bin Laden's wives led to accusations that Pakistan was attempting to muzzle them to stop them from providing details that could embarrass Islamabad or add to suspicions it knew where bin Laden was.

Pakistan, allied to Washington in the "war on terror", was humiliated by the covert American operation that killed the al-Qaida leader in the early hours of May 2.