SANAA, Jan 29, (Agencies): Yemeni Shiite rebels involved in a cross-border conflict with Saudi Arabia said on Thursday that Saudi air and artillery attacks had continued despite a truce offer by the dissidents to the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia declared victory over Yemeni Shiite rebels on Wednesday following the ceasefire offer from the insurgents, who said they had withdrawn from Saudi territory.
The world’s top oil exporter was drawn into a conflict raging between Yemen’s government and the rebels in November, when Riyadh launched a military assault against the insurgents after they seized some Saudi territory.
The rebels, known as Houthis after the clan name of their leaders, said on their website that the Saudi army had pounded their home regions in north Yemen with artillery and launched more than 570 missiles, while the Saudi air force had carried out 21 sorties against the areas.
There was no immediate Saudi reaction to the report.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia demanded that rebels take three steps to prove they wanted to end hostilities: withdraw rebel snipers, return six missing Saudi soldiers and pull back further from the border to create a 10-km (six-mile) border buffer zone inside Yemen secured by the Yemeni army.
Yemen, also waging a campaign against a resurgent al-Qaeda and struggling to contain simmering separatist sentiment in the south, has been fighting the rebels on and off since 2004.
Western powers and Yemen’s neighbours fear the growing chaos in the impoverished Arab country could allow al-Qaeda to strengthen and spread its operations.
On Thursday, Yemeni police arrested Faris Mana, identified as a top Yemeni arms dealer, a government official told Reuters, without giving further details. Mana also headed a committee trying to mediate between the government and the Houthi rebels.
Mana, a prominent clan leader, had been placed on a “black list” of arms dealers issued by the government in October, indicating that they may be prosecuted. The announcement came as officials said they had foiled an attempt to imports arms from China using false documents, newspapers said.
The arrest came a day after a meeting of foreign ministers of Western powers, Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey in London agreed to work together to root out militant groups that threaten security in the region and beyond by tackling the deep causes of radicalisation.
A coalition of Yemeni opposition parties criticised the London meeting for failing to propose a concrete plan and said in a statement that the international community’s involvement may may not “serve Yemen’s interests and help end its crises, but could instead promote instability and corruption”.
Arms are widely available in Yemen, the poorest Arab country, despite government campaigns to curb weapons.
Of Yemen’s population of 23 million, more than 40 percent live on less than $2 a day, and the country’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that unemployment stood at 30 percent.
Fund
The Obama administration is considering creating a special fund to equip, support and train Yemeni security forces to counter al-Qaeda, US military officials said on Wednesday.
The proposed fund under discussion in the Pentagon could be modeled after one created last year to boost Pakistan’s counterinsurgency capabilities, but it is unclear whether a similar approach for Yemen would garner congressional support.
Critics say the internal security and intelligence services that could receive the support were major human rights abusers and that an expanded Pentagon role risked fueling anti-American sentiment and boosting al-Qaeda’s standing.
In addition to battling al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Yemen’s weak central government faces Shiite rebels in the north and separatists in the south, raising questions in Congress about how the Pentagon intends to oversee how equipment is used once it has been transferred.
“There are a number of concerns, such as ensuring the CT (counterterrorism) training and assistance goes to fighting AQAP, and is not diverted toward other priorities of the Yemeni government. This will involve some very difficult diplomacy with Sanaa,” Christopher Boucek, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, referring to the Yemeni capital.
Washington has urged Yemen to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict with the Houthis, who are fighting government troops in the north and complain of social, religious and economic discrimination.
An alleged failed plot by a militant trained by Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to blow up a US airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day has increased support in Washington for stronger counterterrorism measures.
Creating a counterinsurgency fund dedicated to Yemen would give the Pentagon more sweeping authority to train and equip a wider range of security forces, among them special counterterrorism units controlled by Yemen’s Interior Ministry.
“Pakistan gave us a model to follow,” a US military official said.
Annual US State Department reports on human rights in Yemen have highlighted allegations of torture by Interior Ministry forces.
Washington has quietly increased covert assistance to Yemen in the last two months, providing satellite and surveillance imagery, and intercepted communications to help the country’s security forces carry out strikes against al-Qaeda targets, officials said.
US Special Forces provide training and other assistance, they said.
Under its main, publicly-disclosed counterterrorism assistance program, US funding is capped and largely limited to training and equipping security forces that fall under the direct control of a nation’s defense ministry, rather than those under an interior ministry.
General David Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, has proposed more than doubling military assistance for Yemen to about $150 million, but it is unclear how much of that will be drawn from 1206 accounts.
Crisis
Fighting in northern Yemen is spreading and the five-year conflict has now driven 250,000 people from their homes, deepening the humanitarian crisis, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday.
The number of displaced in the Arab world’s poorest country has doubled since August when the latest round of fighting between the government and Houthi rebels erupted, it said.
“The fighting has gradually moved from Saada city and its surroundings towards the northwest,” Andrej Mahecic, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told a news briefing.
This had led to “a steady influx” of around 1,000 families, some 7,000 people, arriving in Hajjah province each week over the past six weeks, he said. Most families were from Saada.
Fighting between Yemeni troops and Houthi rebels, who say the Zaidi Shiite minority suffers discrimination and neglect, has flared on and off since 2004 in Saada province.
Aid agencies including the UNHCR and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) say that fighting prevents them from delivering aid to Saada province.
It is increasingly difficult for the displaced to make ends meet and get access to health and education, Mahecic said.
“Most of them fled leaving behind almost all of their belongings and cattle which was the pillar of their livelihoods and primary source of income,” he said.

Investing
Yemen, grappling with poverty and a resurgent al-Qaeda, is in talks with Saudi firms interested in acquiring farms or investing in fishery and livestock production with a first deal eyed by June, an official said.
Talks with Gulf investors mainly from neighbouring Saudi Arabia focused on investing in the western Red Sea coastal area of Houdeida, home to a port and fishery industry, Salah Attar, chairman of Yemen’s General Investment Authority, told Reuters.
“We hope to conclude a big project, which is considered a strategic project, within quarter two of this year... It’s a huge project,” he said, adding that a first phase of the deal could be in the range of several hundred million dollars.
He declined to name the interested Saudi investor, saying only that it was a well-known firm. Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, has been encouraging private investors to invest in agricultural projects abroad to secure food supplies.
Western and Arab powers worry that Yemen, where around 40 percent of the population lives on $2 a day, will become a failed state and fear al-Qaeda could exploit the situation to use Yemen as a base for attacks.
A Yemen-based regional wing of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for a failed Dec 25 attack on a US-bound passenger plane, driving home how the militant group could threaten Western interests from Yemen.
Yemen says it needs $2 billion a year in economic aid to stay afloat and double that amount to turn around the economy in a country facing a Shiite revolt in the north, separatists in the south and al-Qaeda militants.
The US military needs to act discreetly when assisting some allies in the fight against al-Qaeda extremists, as it has in Yemen, a top general said on Thursday.
“What we increasingly have to do is figure out how to help countries that need our assistance but can’t necessarily be seen as accepting that assistance in a very visible way,” US Army Chief of Staff General George Casey said in remarks at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank.
“I think the successes we’ve had recently in Yemen demonstrate a way to do that. Again we have to be careful in thinking we can go in and take over everybody’s problems and solve them,” he said.
His comments came as US officials praised Yemen’s recent crackdown against al-Qaeda and after a Washington Post report said US special forces and intelligence officers were deeply involved in the manhunts.
Casey said Saudi officials have advised against deploying large numbers of US ground troops in Yemen as it could trigger popular anger and hand a propaganda victory to Islamist extremists.
“I was in Saudi Arabia just last week and I was told it would not be a good thing — this is the view of the Saudi officials — to put US boots on the ground in Yemen because it would attract more jihadists and it could possibly turn the tribes against us,” the general said.