July 10, 2011
Envoy Meets With Leader of Yemen on Accord
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON -- President Obama sent his counterterrorism chief to Saudi Arabia over the weekend to meet with Yemen's badly injured president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, with the envoy telling him that the only way to get American aid flowing again was to sign an accord that would effectively remove Mr. Saleh from power.
The envoy, John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. station chief in Saudi Arabia who has been the administration's middleman to the embattled Yemeni leader, is presumed to have urged Mr. Saleh not to return to Sana, the Yemeni capital, following weeks of statements from administration officials that they believe his return would incite more violence. Mr. Saleh was rushed to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, after he was severely burned in a bombing of his presidential compound on June 3. He appeared on television [1] last week for the first time since the attack, [2] and much of his skin was covered during the appearance.
In a written statement on Sunday, the White House said Mr. Brennan "called on President Saleh to fulfill expeditiously his pledge to sign" an agreement brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council, which would lead to a transition ending his 33 years in office and grant the president immunity. The statement said that "much needed assistance will flow to Yemen as soon as the G.C.C. proposal is signed and implemented."
The Yemeni economy is on the brink of collapse, in part because of the months of unrest.
The United States had long been a supporter of Mr. Saleh's authoritarian rule, viewing it as the best way to combat Qaeda affiliates in Yemen. But the Obama administration withdrew its support four months ago, after concluding that Mr. Saleh's government could not survive the uprisings sweeping the country, and that American interests were better served in getting a new government in place that might allow continued American attacks on Al Qaeda.
That issue is becoming more urgent. Militants linked to Al Qaeda have been able to exploit the turmoil that has resulted from Mr. Saleh's resistance to leave office, becoming bolder in the country's lawless southern region. The militants now control two cities and are close to Aden, the strategically important port on the Arabian Sea.
Mr. Saleh has not been clear about when, or if, he might seek to return to Sana.
Mr. Saleh and Mr. Brennan have such a long history together that he was the natural choice for a presidential envoy. He has talked to the Yemeni president numerous times since street protests broke out in February, following uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. At times Mr. Brennan has broken into Arabic to make an emphatic point to Mr. Saleh.
In the State Department cables [3] released by WikiLeaks, the nature of the American dance with Mr. Saleh before the uprisings was made particularly vivid. In some cables, Mr. Saleh insisted on maintaining the fiction that attacks on Al Qaeda were orchestrated by the Yemen government, not the United States, and American officials went along with the creation of that mythology. It fooled no one: Mr. Saleh's forces did not have that kind of reach and power.
But the cables also revealed Mr. Saleh's long-running suspicions of American intentions. The Americans, he told one visitor, Daniel Benjamin, the State Department's counterterrorism chief, are "hot-blooded and hasty when you need us," but "cold-blooded and British when we need you."
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/world/middleeast/08saleh.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/world/middleeast/04yemen.html
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/statessecrets.html