Cheney, Yemeni Leader Hold Talks

Making perhaps the most sensitive stop of his Middle East tour, Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday courted a Yemeni government anxious about taking up a role in the war on terrorism. Meanwhile, new details emerged about U.S. military assistance to the Arabian Peninsula state.

The vice president spent less than two hours in Yemen’s capital, Sana, talking with President Ali Abdullah Saleh before leaving for Salalah, Oman. Cheney flew on a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane that made evasive maneuvers in case of missile attack or gunfire.

The United States is reportedly preparing to send at least 100 troops to Yemen to help train its forces for anti-terror operations. The country has been considered one of the more likely places where Al Qaeda terrorists fleeing Afghanistan might seek refuge.

While Cheney met with Saleh, Faris Sanabani, the publisher of the English-language Yemen Observer newspaper, who has connections to the government, said Yemen expects three groups of U.S. military trainers--20 to 30 in each group--to visit for about one month each.

Yemen already has received several senior U.S. officials, among them CIA Director George J. Tenet and FBI chief Robert Mueller.

Sanabani said that Yemen does not want the Americans “to come in and do the fighting,” but that the government understands “the importance of having trainers.”

He spoke with a small group of reporters who traveled to Yemen with Cheney. His comments were relayed to others in Oman.

The U.S.-Yemeni cooperation represents a significant shift for the government in Sana, even if the level of U.S. involvement is relatively low.

Yemen has been home to terrorist operations in the past, and it was the site of the October 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole, which killed 17 sailors. The new U.S. ambassador to Yemen was formerly the State Department’s acting counter-terrorism chief.

Cheney took only a limited delegation to Yemen, the fourth country on his 12-nation, 11-day tour that began Sunday in London and is now taking him through the Middle East.

The journey had been organized around the Bush administration’s efforts to build support to expand the war on terrorism beyond Afghanistan and seek out Al Qaeda operatives and other terrorists throughout the Islamic world. Cheney is also discussing with his hosts the administration’s campaign to counter Iraq’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

But the spiral of Israeli-Palestinian violence has pushed that conflict onto the agenda at every stop.

Yemen was not originally on Cheney’s schedule, but it was added after Saleh requested the visit.