Qatar in efforts to preserve Yemeni unity, emir says

Jul 13, 2010, 19:13 GMT

Sana'a, Yemen - Qatar is initiating efforts to mediate between the Yemeni government and its southern opponents amid escalating separatist violence in the south of the Arab country, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said on Tuesday.

'We will be happy to participate in finding any solution that helps preserve the Yemeni unity,' the Qatari Emir told reporters after talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sana'a.

'We are always with our brothers in Yemen to help in there problems,' he said.

South and north Yemen were united in 1990, but southern areas of the country have recently been the scene of a series of violent anti-government protests and attacks which have left dozens of casualties among protesters and security forces.

Separatists groups claim that the central government discriminates against southerners, especially after a civil war in 1994 that ended with the defeat of the army of the formerly socialist south by northern forces led by Saleh.

The Qatari government will also resume its mediation efforts to cement a fragile truce between Shiite rebels and the government in northern Yemen, the Yemeni president said.

Saleh said the Qatari efforts would be based on a 2007 Qatari-brokered peace agreement signed by representatives of the Yemeni government and the rebels in Doha.

'We agreed to reactivate the Doha agreement,' Saleh told reporters after the meeting at the Presidential Palace in Sana'a.

Yemeni officials declared the collapse of the Qatari mediation in August 2009, accusing the rebels were unwilling to abide by its terms.

Fighting between Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, and government forces has continued sporadically in the north-western Saada province since mid-2004. The two sides inked a peace agreement in February, but both sides have since been accusing each others of violating it.

Saada is a remote mountainous province located the border with Saudi Arabia, some 230 kilometres north of the capital Sana'a.

Under the Qatari-sponsored peace deal, signed in Doha in June 2007, the rebels should vacate their locations in mountains of Saada, while the government in turn would gradually release detained rebels.

The agreement also provides that the rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi and his two brothers, Yahay and Abdul-Kareem, would be allowed to live in exile in Qatar.

Waves of clashes since mid-2004 have left hundreds of government troops and rebels dead and displaced around 350,000 civilians from their villages.

Yemeni officials have repeatedly accused the Houthis of trying to topple the republican regime and re-establish the rule of the Zaidi Imamate, a royal regime that was overthrown by a revolution in 1962.

The Houthis belong mostly to the Zaidi sect of Islam, which is regarded a moderate sect.