The UNSC welcomes Yemen agreement to end crisis and urges parties to implement it on time

The UNSC welcomes Yemen agreement to end crisis and urges parties to implement it  on time

Source: UN News

New York-The Security Council today welcomed the new political agreement in Yemen and the mechanism outlining how it can be implemented, but stressed that the deal must be strictly implemented to end unrest and restore stability in the country.

The peace initiative by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the implementation mechanism agreed to on Wednesday must be carried out in “in a serious, transparent, and timely manner, and in a spirit of inclusion and reconciliation,” the Council said in a press statement.

The Council expects the parties “to honour the timetable set out in the agreement, including the formation of a government of national consensus, presidential elections within 90 days, a national dialogue, a constitutional review, and a programme of reforms that start to tackle the profound humanitarian, economic and security challenges that Yemen faces.”

In the statement, read out by Ambassador José Filipe Moraes Cabral of Portugal, which holds the Council’s presidency this month, the 15-member panel reaffirmed its commitment to Yemen’s territorial integrity and unity, and urged all parties to reject violence, refrain from provocation, and fully implement the Council’s previous resolution on restoring peace in the impoverished country.

It reiterated that all those responsible for violence, human rights violations and abuses should be held accountable, and deplored acts of violence that occurred on Thursday, when five people were reportedly killed in the capital, Sana’a.

The Council stressed the need for increased and unimpeded humanitarian access, and urged all Yemeni parties to work with the UN, the international community and the GCC to achieve lasting peace, stability and reconciliation.

Earlier, Jamal Benomar, the UN Special Adviser on Yemen, told reporters after briefing the Council that the accord paves the way for a credible transition and provides a detailed roadmap for change through the broad participation of citizens.

“The implementation envisions meaningful participation across the full political spectrum, including the youth who paved the way for this change in the political order,” Mr. Benomar said of the pact.

“It is imperative that the new Government of National Unity engages with all constituencies including the youth, the Houthis, and the Hirak movement in the south,” he said.

Under the accord, President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to hand over his powers to Vice-President Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi and presidential elections are to be held within three months.

“All Yemenis will now need to come together to reconcile, and to tackle the difficulties that lie ahead,” he said, noting that “violence and unrest has continued despite the reaching of a political solution on 23 November.”

He said he had told the Council that all Yemeni parties will need to take responsibility and use the opportunity to foster positive change for the country, uphold human rights and desist from further violence.

Mr. Benomar urged the international community to step up support for Yemen’s recovery, as requested by both parties to the agreement. The UN and the rest of the international community will monitor the accord’s implementation and remain engaged, he said.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon remained fully committed to supporting the transition and the post-election period through mobilizing the entire UN and Member States to help Yemen address its political, humanitarian, security and economic challenges, Mr. Benomar added.

The Council was also briefed on the humanitarian situation in Yemen by Philippe Lazzarini, the Deputy Director of the Coordination and Response Division of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Last week’s political agreement followed months of deadly clashes between supporters and opponents of Mr. Saleh and his regime, part of the so-called Arab Spring movement that has swept the Middle East and North Africa this year.

Ex-friend says goal was terror training

He and Mehanna traveled to Yemen

By Milton J. Valencia

Source The Boston Globe

A once-close friend of Tarek Mehanna testified yesterday in Mehanna’s terrorism-conspiracy trial that the two of them and a third man conspired to travel to Yemen in search of terrorism training in 2004.

They also discussed domestic terrorist plots, such as a mass shooting at a Massachusetts Air Force base, a shopping mall, and even the assassination of top US officials, all in the name of jihad, according to the testimony in US District Court in Boston.

“We had to do something,’’ said Kareem Abuzahra, who said he was part of the terrorism conspiracy but cooperated with authorities and agreed to testify against Mehanna in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

When asked what “do something’’ meant, he responded: “Participate in jihad against the US. It was our duty. Defending Muslims and defending jihad.’’

Abuzahra, a computer science professional from Lynnfield, was a key prosecution witness in the case against Mehanna. For more than an hour yesterday, he traced a timeline from when he and Mehanna grew more devoted to Islam in 2000 to when they discussed acquiring weapons from a friend in 2003 to carry out a local attack.

Abuzahra acknowledged that he, Mehanna, and a third associate had scrapped the plan to carry out a mass shooting. Defense attorneys are expected to argue during a cross-examination of Abuzahra that Mehanna opposed an attack in the United States on religious grounds.

But prosecutors hoped to use Abuzahra’s testimony to establish that Mehanna and his closest associates had considered acting against the United States, to the point they planned to go to Yemen to seek paramilitary training in a terrorist camp.

“Eventually, the goal was to get into Iraq,’’ Abuzahra said.

Abuzahra said their cover story was that they were going to Yemen to explore Islamic language schools, a scenario he described when he was questioned by the FBI in summer 2006. But he later agreed to cooperate with authorities because, “I realized the interest in me by the government was more than I originally expected.’’

Mehanna, 29, an American citizen who lived with his parents in Sudbury, faces life in prison if convicted of charges of conspiracy to support terrorists and to kill in a foreign country and of lying to FBI investigators.

Prosecutors say he traveled to Yemen for terrorist training so that he could fight US soldiers in Iraq. He failed to find a camp and returned to the United States two weeks later. But prosecutors say he had a new strategy, to support Al Qaeda by promoting the terrorist organization’s ideology.

Mehanna used his fluency in Arabic to translate and distribute materials promoting jihad on the Internet.

His defense attorneys argue that Mehanna was a young, budding scholar devoted to the academics and laws of his religion. They do not deny that he distributed controversial materials on the Internet, but said he was simply expressing his own, constitutionally protected beliefs.

Defense attorneys argue that Mehanna traveled to Yemen solely to find schools. A third man, Ahmad Abousamra, told others he was going in search of jihad, and ultimately traveled to Iraq, the defense lawyers acknowledge. But they argue that Mehanna should not be held responsible for the actions of an associate.

Abuzahra never traveled to Yemen and did not say why during his direct testimony yesterday. But prosecutors have said that he returned to the United States during a layover in the United Arab Emirates after receiving a call saying his father was ill. His relationship with Mehanna frayed after the trip.

Abuzahra, 31, a father of two, spoke quickly and pointedly to the court. He said he has known Mehanna and his family since childhood, but that the two grew closer around 2000. He said he met Abousamra later that year.

They followed a conservative interpretation of their religion, and spoke of jihad, Abuzahra said. They backed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, because “Americans had been pushing around everyone for so long, this was a way to get back at them.’’

But it was not until the US invasion in Iraq in 2003, he said, that they began to speak seriously of jihad against the United States. He said he and Mehanna had discussed the possibility of entering Iraq, but believed it would be too difficult.

In 2003, Abuzahra said, Abousamra spoke generally of the possibility of killing former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and former US attorney general John Ashcroft.

Later, he said, they discussed acquiring weapons to shoot up a mall or Hanscom Air Force Base near Bedford.

“All three of you agreed, it’s not going to work,’’ Assistant US Attorney Aloke Chakravarty said, to which Abuzahra said yes.

Milton J. Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @miltonvalencia.

Yemen's Next Crises: Giving Saleh the Push May Have Been the Easy Part

By Tom Finn / Sana'a Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011

Source: Time World

A rare moment of jubilation erupted in Sana'a on Nov. 23 as Yemenis gathered around their television sets to watch their ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh, sign a deal transferring power to his deputy, effectively ending his 33-year grip on power. Grainy images on state TV showed a grinning Saleh seated next to Saudi King Abdullah in an ornate palace hall in Riyadh. Saleh chuckled briefly as he signed four copies of the U.S.-backed proposal which will see him retain the honorary title of President until a new head of state is elected in February. He then joined in on an ensuing round of applause.

"This disagreement for the last 10 months has had a big impact on Yemen in the realms of culture, development, politics, which led to a threat to national unity and destroyed what has been built in past years," he told a flock of Saudi sheiks, foreign ambassadors and tired-looking U.N. diplomats perched on a line of gold-crested chairs. "I declare the turning of a new page in the history of Yemen," said King Abdullah in a closing statement after the signing ceremony. (See photos from Yemen's Change Square in Sana'a.)

Saleh had balked at a signing on three previous occasions, and so seeing the deed done and attested too came as a relief to many Yemenis, exhausted and terrified after almost 10 months of bloodshed, political deadlock, soaring food and petrol prices, daily power cuts and an imploding economy. Fireworks and celebratory gunfire crackled overhead as hordes of people descended on Change Square, the sprawling tented shantytown in the heart of the capital where pro-democracy demonstrators have been camped out in their thousands since February. Fathers hoisted wriggling toddlers onto their shoulders as a group of grizzly-bearded tribesmen performed the bara — the traditional dagger dance — on a makeshift wooden stage, twirling the curved blades above their heads to cries of "Goodbye ya Ali, the tyrant has fled!"

For now all eyes are on Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi, Yemen's 66-year-old Vice President, who will assume caretaker responsibility for the government in the interim. Despite harking from the southern province of Abyan, al-Hadi, an ex-military commander, stuck by Saleh during the brutal 1994 civil war (South Yemen was an independent state governed by socialists until it was merged with the north in 1990). His loyalty earned him the title of Vice President, which he has clung to ever since. Forced to operate in Saleh's shadow, al-Hadi has never been a strong player on the Yemeni political scene and many still see him as an al-zumra, one of Saleh's token men from the south: smart, well connected but ultimately politically weak.

The last time al-Hadi was acting head of state, Saleh was recuperating in a Saudi hospital after a booby-trap explosion ripped through his presidential mosque in June. Western officials tried to court al-Hadi as if he were the acting power in Yemen, but it was clear who was ruling the roost when Ahmed Saleh, the President's temperamental son and commander of the Republican Guard, locked the Vice President out of the presidential palace and forced him to work from home. As long as the Saleh boys are breathing down his neck, al-Hadi will struggle to stamp his authority on the country. (See photos of Yemen on the brink.)

Al-Hadi's weakness, among several other factors, has tainted the excitement over Saleh's signing the agreement with skepticism and anger. Skepticism because the regime remains largely intact, with Saleh safely sheltered in his palace and his sons and nephews still occupying the upper echelons of the military and intelligence services. And anger because the deal, backed by the U.S. and the U.N., includes an instruction to Yemeni lawmakers to grant Saleh and his family immunity from prosecution — despite widespread corruption allegations and hundreds of protesters shot dead in recent months by government troops.

So far, the deal has altered little on the ground. Mass protests have erupted in towns and cities across Yemen in response to the signing. Cries of "The revolution continues" and "No immunity for the murderers" now echo daily through the winding alleyways of Sana'a. On Thursday, just a day after the agreement was signed, a mob of Kalashnikov-wielding plainclothes government thugs, or balaatija as the protesters call them, picked off five demonstrators with their guns from a rooftop and maimed a further 30 as they stormed through the streets of Sana'a calling for Saleh to be put on trial.

A date for presidential elections has been proposed for Feb. 21. If they go ahead, they will be the first elections in unified Yemen's 21-year history that don't feature Saleh as a candidate. But rather than a triumph of democracy, the elections appear to be little more than a rubber stamp, a mechanism for the elites to reach a political consensus. Voters will likely only get the chance to elect one candidate — the Vice President — and won't get the chance to exercise their vote again until parliamentary elections, which aren't expected for another two years. Protesters have already voiced opposition to the elections, claiming them to be a farce. They are also threatening to burn their electoral ID cards if Saleh's family aren't removed from positions of power.

But, with Saleh supposedly out of the picture, attention is quickly shifting from the street to the political elite. Yemen's formal opposition coalition, the JMP, a motley assortment of socialists, Sunni Islamists and Baathists who for years were shut out of the political process by Saleh's all-powerful ruling party, now find themselves entering into a government of national unity with their old rivals. (Watch a video of Yemen's volatile uprising.)

On Sunday, their favored candidate, a 78-year-old veteran of South Yemen's struggle for independence from Britain, Mohammed Basindwa, was appointed Prime Minister. In the coming days they will gain substantial parliamentary representation as the country's ministerial offices are divvied out between the two. But if Saleh — who declared a general amnesty on Sunday for people who had committed "follies" during the uprising — continues to behave like President, there is a real risk that the fragile coalition will unravel.

The JMP's new rapport with Saleh's party is already costing them popularity. A rift has developed between the highly organized Islamic Islah party, which dominate the JMP, and the nonpartisan youth who first laid their tents in Change Square back in January. The youth accuse the opposition of hijacking their revolution and betraying them by signing the deal that grants Saleh immunity. Speakers from the Islah party were sent diving for cover last Thursday when a group of youth launched a coordinated attack on the main stage in Change Square, pelting it with stones, eggs and plastic bottles, shouting: "Our stage, our revolution, down with the opposition!"

Meanwhile, Yemenis are waiting nervously to see how Saleh's chief rivals, Major General Ali Mohsen, an old confidant of the President who defected in March, and the powerful al-Ahmar clan respond to the violence. For months now, the sandbagged streets of downtown Sana'a have been the scene of running street battles as the Republican Guard — an elite force headed by Saleh's son Ahmed — fight with the well-armed supporters of the general and the Ahmars, who lead the country's most powerful tribal federation. Getting Saleh to sign may have been the easiest Yemeni problem to solve.

U.N. council demands action over Yemen killings

Source:  Al Arabiya

The United Nations Security Council late Monday called for those behind killings and rights abuses in Yemen to be “held accountable” as demands grew for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to face trial.

Saleh has signed a deal under which he handed over powers to the vice president in return for immunity from prosecution. But Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkul Karman on Monday met the International Criminal Court prosecutor to demand action against Saleh.

And the 15-nation Security Council “reiterated that all those responsible for violence, human rights violations and abuses should be held accountable” after a meeting on Yemen. It did not name Saleh.

Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkul Karman on Monday met the International Criminal Court prosecutor to demand action against Saleh.

Yemeni Nobel peace laureate Tawakkul Karman on Monday met the International Criminal Court prosecutor to demand action against Saleh.

Karman said she had submitted photographs of victims and witness accounts of the Yemeni government crackdown on protests to ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, according to AFP.

“I’m here to tell the prosecutor to use his rights to convince the international community and the Security Council to bring Saleh to the ICC,” Karman said in The Hague.

The crackdown since January is said to have left hundreds dead but the immunity is written into the accord brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Saleh, 69, told U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon he would seek treatment in the United States after signing the accord in Saudi Arabia last week. Saleh has since returned to Yemen however.

In a statement, the Security Council “deplored” new deadly violence in the capital, Sana’a, and “emphasized the need for increased and unimpeded humanitarian access to address the growing crisis.”

The statement, received by Al Arabiya, hailed the efforts by the GCC and Benomar in attempting to end the Yemeni crisis.

“The members of the Security Council agreed that the Gulf Cooperation Council initiative and implementation mechanism must now be implemented in a serious, transparent, and timely manner, and in a spirit of inclusion and reconciliation,” said the statement.

The statement expressed the Security Council’s “support for Yemen in its efforts to reach key milestones in the implementation plan and expected the parties to honor the timetable set out in the agreement, including the formation of a Government of National Consensus, Presidential elections within 90 days, a national dialogue, a constitutional review, and a program of reforms that start to tackle the profound humanitarian, economic and security challenges that Yemen faces.”

According to the statement, “the Security Council reaffirmed commitment to the territorial integrity and unity of Yemen.” urging all the parties to “reject violence, refrain from any further provocations, and to fully implement Security Council Resolution 2014.”

Despite the controversy still swirling around Saleh, who ruled for 33 years, the U.N. special envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar, said the GCC accord “opens the door to a credible transition” in the strife-torn country.

“There are many challenges that remain. All Yemenis will need to come together, to reconcile and to tackle the difficulties that lie ahead,” Benomar told reporters after briefing the council.

He said the peace plan, which called for new elections and the creation of an interim government, was "on track" and that the accord did not oblige Saleh to leave Yemen.

Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has called a presidential election for Feb. 21 and on Sunday named opposition chief Mohammed Basindawa to form an interim government.

“The plan is credible and it will be more credible if all the parties cooperate for implementation,” Benomar told reporters, stressing that the three months leading up to the elections would be a “delicate phase.”

Signing on GCC deal, its mechanism ‘’will really end Yemen’s grinding crisis” says US Ambassador to Yemen

Source: Yemen Observer

Yemen Vice President: ambassadors of SC permanent members, GCC to take part in implementing reconciliation deal.

Vice President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi met on Monday the ambassadors of the permanent members of UN Security Council and the Gulf Cooperation Council states and the ambassador of the European Union to Yemen.

During the meeting, Hadi said that the signing of the Gulf-brokered initiative and its mechanism in the Saudi capital Riyadh was the first implementation step, adding ‘’We have called for presidential elections to be held on 21 February’’.

The vice president pointed out that all foreign ambassadors in Yemen, particularly the GCC ambassadors, are partners in the implementation process of the Gulf initiative and its mechanisms.

He went on to say that the economic problem may have been the most prominent cause of the current political and security crises.

For his part, US ambassador in Sana'a Gerald Feierstein said in the meeting that the signing of the initiative and its mechanism ‘’will really end Yemen’s grinding crisis’’, stressing that his country would provide support and assistance needed for applying this agreement.

The Russian envoy to Yemen pointed to ‘’the need for full cooperation with Yemen, especially at this critical stage’’, calling for the establishment of a fund for reconstruction in Yemen.

For his part, the EU ambassador called for the establishment of a fund for economical and developmental assistance to Yemen.