Britain to give 150 million dollars to help Yemen development

Jun 22, 2010, 22:38 GMT

Sana'a, Yemen - The British government has allocated 150 million dollars as a grant to finance development projects in Yemen, Yemen's official Saba news agency said Tuesday.

The announcement came during a two-day visit to the Arab state by Alastair Burt, Britain's minister for the Middle East and South Asia.

Burt held talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on 'tackling economic and social challenges that Yemen faces,' the British official said in a statement.

'Working together to address these issues is the best way to defeat terrorism within Yemen's borders,' he said.

Burt informed Saleh of the 150-million-dollar grant to Yemen during their meeting, Saba reported.

At a London conference in 2006, donors pledged 4.7 billion dollars to help Yemen, but only a fraction of this money has been distributed so far.

The country is facing severe poverty and crippling unemployment while also suffering a steep decline in oil revenues that have left the government struggling to make ends meet.

Yemen is trying to cope with a deteriorating security situation in several parts of the country. On Saturday, a suspected al-Qaeda attack on the headquarters of a Yemeni intelligence service in the southern port city of Aden left 11 people dead.