SANAA, Nov 8, (Agencies): US-Yemeni radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi has called for the killing of Americans “without hesitation” and accused Iran of trying to impose control over Sunnis in the Gulf, SITE monitors said on Monday.
“Do not consult anyone in killing Americans,” Awlaqi said in a 23-minute video posted on jihadist websites, according to the US monitoring group.
“Killing the devil does not need any fatwa (religious edict),” he added.
“It’s either us or you,” Awlaqi said, addressing Americans in the video, which first surfaced on October 23 when one minute of footage was posted on jihadist forums.
“America and Israel are controlling our ummah (nation) and soon Iran will interfere to get its share of the pie,” he said.

“There is a US-Israeli struggle on one side and an Iranian on the other to impose their control on Sunni areas.”
The Gulf’s “Sunni citizens” will be “the first victims” of Iran, said Awlaqi, speaking in Arabic from behind behind a desk and sporting a sheathed dagger in his belt.
He accused Iran of trying to “spread a deviant ideology in Yemen,” referring to Shiism. Sanaa accuses Iran of supporting northern rebels of the Zaidi faith, a branch of Shiism. Iran denies the claim.
The cleric also slammed Muslim scholars for their silence on the arrest of an Australian woman in Yemen for suspected links with al-Qaeda.

“Why this silence” over the arrest of the Australian “sister,” he asked.
The woman, Shylogh Giddens, a convert to Islam who was in Yemen to learn Arabic, was deported together with her two children on her release in June.
Awlaqi also hailed the “jihadis (holy fighters) in Somalia, who have shown their ability to run the country according to sharia (Islamic law)” and “the Taliban in Afghanistan, which inflict lessons to the world’s most powerful army,” he said, in an obvious reference to the US military.
Awlaki said Muslim clerics should do more to encourage attacks on foreign forces in Muslim countries.
“Just speaking on the podium is not enough... Words that are not linked with action or provide society with practical steps that lead to change do not benefit us in this time,” he said.
“Either we support the mujahideen and win everything, or we let them down and lose everything,” he said. Mujahideen is a term that means militants who wage jihad, or “holy struggle”.

The authenticity of the video could not immediately be verified.
The cleric, who was charged last Tuesday in Yemen over alleged ties with al-Qaeda and incitement to kill foreigners, is wanted in the United States on terrorism charges.
Washington has linked the young imam and son of a former Yemeni government minister to a shooting rampage last November at a US army base and to the botched Christmas Day alleged al-Qaeda attack on a US airliner.
Prosecutors on Tuesday told a Yemeni court specialising in terrorism cases that Awlaqi had for months corresponded with Hisham Mohammed Assem, a Yemeni accused of shooting dead French energy contractor Jacques Spagnolo near Sanaa last month, encouraging him to kill foreigners.
Assem has denied being influenced by Awlaqi and insists he killed Spagnolo over a personal feud.
The court, under mounting US pressure to fight al-Qaeda after a foiled air cargo bomb plot, on Saturday ordered the arrest by any means of Awlaqi for alleged links to al-Qaeda.
The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb plot and said it was also behind the September downing of an American cargo plane in Dubai, according to SITE Intelligence Group.

The two parcels addressed to synagogues in Chicago and containing the lethal explosive PETN hidden in ink toner cartridges were uncovered in Dubai and Britain on October 28, sparking a global security alert.
Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and headquarters of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has been under intense pressure from Washington to hunt down Awlaqi.
The cleric has not immediately been linked to the parcel bombs, but American officials have long accused him of instigating “terrorism” from Yemen, where he is believed to be hiding in a remote area of Shabwa.
“Mr. Awlaqi is a problem,” US Homeland Security and Counterrorism Adviser John Brennan said in January.
“He’s clearly a part of al-Qaeda in (the) Arabian Peninsula. He’s not just a cleric. He is in fact trying to instigate terrorism,” said Brennan.
He directly accused Awlaqi of having links with Major Nidal Hasan who is suspected of shooting dead 13 people at Fort Hood military base in Texas and said he also have had contact with Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up the Christmas Day plane.

Vital
Saudi-US security cooperation on an October parcel bomb plot showed the “vital” need for Western security collaboration with Muslim states, a former British foreign minister said on Monday in Abu Dhabi.
“Cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the United States in the recent bomb plot originating in the Yemen is a stark demonstration of the vital need for real-time cooperation between our countries on security issues,” David Miliband said in a talk in Abu Dhabi on the need to expand Muslim-Western cooperation.

The New York Times reported on November 5 that Saudi Arabia gave Washington a credible warning that al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen was planning a terrorist attack against the United States, citing unnamed US and European officials.
However, Miliband argued in his speech that cooperation between Muslim and Western states should be expanded across the board, and not limited to security issues.
“The rationale for cooperation is often linked to security issues, but... I think this is insufficient,” he said, adding that “if we only focus on that, we would compound the sense of disrespect and imbalance in relations.”
“The case for closer cooperation between the West and Muslim-majority countries is very urgent.”
“Across the world, a billion-plus-strong Muslim community... represents a source of wealth, of ideas, of innovation that are going to be vital in solving the world’s problems,” he said.
“In other words, our fate is bound more closely together than ever before.”
Miliband, of Britain’s Labour party, was foreign minister for three years from 2007, until a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government took power following general elections in May.

Denied
The Yemeni foreign minister denied any US military role in his country’s fight against al-Qaeda in comments published Monday after a report Washington had deployed drones to hunt down jihadists.
“The United States cooperates with Yemen in intelligence, but the operations are conducted by the Yemeni security forces,” Abu Bakr al-Kurbi told Abu Dhabi daily The National.
“Yemen has combat aircraft.”
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the US administration had deployed unmanned Predator aircraft to Yemen to hunt for al-Qaeda militants who have become increasingly active in the impoverished Arab country.
So far the drones have not fired any missiles as US military and intelligence operatives have failed to establish firm information about the whereabouts of wanted militants, the US daily said citing senior US officials it did not identify.
The Yemeni minister said his government was also cooperating with neighbouring Saudi Arabia to address the al-Qaeda threat.
“There is intelligence cooperation between Yemen and all the Arab countries, with Saudi Arabia more than other countries because of our relationship and the movement of terrorists between Yemen and the kingdom,” he told The National.

Lawsuit
The Obama administration will on Monday try to persuade a US judge to throw out a lawsuit challenging its program to capture or kill US citizens who have joined militant groups like al-Qaeda, including Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.
In a test of President Barack Obama’s war powers, the Center for Constitutional Rights and American Civil Liberties Union have demanded the program be halted and subject to public scrutiny over when Americans can be targeted.
The Obama administration has refused to officially confirm the program exists, though US officials have said the CIA has been given the green light to capture or kill al-Awlaqi, an American citizen hiding in Yemen who has been tied to several plots against the United States in the last year.
US District Judge John Bates will hear arguments at by the civil liberties groups who want an injunction against the program as well as rebuttals from the administration, which has urged him to dismiss the case.
The ACLU and CCR filed the lawsuit in August on behalf of al-Awlaqi’s father, who wants to protect his son, but they argue the case is more about the president’s authority to use lethal force and the limits upon that power.

Obama’s Justice Department urged the judge not to interfere with the president’s decisions on how best to protect the country. The government also contends al-Awlaqi can show up in court to defend himself, so his father has no right to bring the case.
“If the arguments that the government has made in this case are accepted, then the president will have the unreviewable authority to order the assassination of any American whom he labels an enemy of the state,” Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer who will argue part of the case to Bates, told Reuters.
Jaffer stressed the challenge was bigger than al-Awlaqi, who was born in New Mexico but left the country in late 2001, and focused on whether individuals far from the battlefield can be lawfully targeted.
Nonetheless, al-Awlaqi will loom large over the hearing as US officials have said the cleric has taken a leadership role in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, which has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks.
And that has taken on even more significance in the last two weeks because the group said it was behind the plot to send bombs to the United States through US cargo carriers. The packages were intercepted before they could explode during stopovers in England and Dubai after a tip from Saudi Arabia.

Cooperation
Meanwhile, the White House is seeking greater and swifter cooperation on intelligence sharing with the Yemeni government and more opportunities to train Yemeni counterterrorism teams in the aftermath of the airline package bombs, a senior administration official said Sunday.
Cooperation between the US and Yemen on counterterrorism matters is already fairly good and was improving since the White House made the country a priority, the official said.
But now the White House is using the near-miss of the multiple package bombs as a way to “push for more” collaboration, added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to share the high-level strategy deliberations.
In particular, the US wants more real-time access to intelligence gleaned by Yemeni counterterrorist forces and intelligence services, the official said. The US is also seeking greater access to question detainees in Yemen suspected of belonging to that country’s terror faction, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, also known as AQAP, the official added.
An interagency counterterrorism team has evolved over the past year in Yemen, as the administration has tried to determine what mix of US government capabilities is best suited to the mostly clandestine mission. Those elements include the CIA, FBI, and elite US special operations units, according to multiple current and former US officials.

The challenge is getting the Yemenis to agree on who they’ll work with, and how much access they’ll grant, one former official said.
The US is allowed to fly pilotless Predator drones and other observation aircraft over Yemeni territory, many of them launched from the US base in nearby Djibouti.
Yemeni officials have resisted basing the drones inside their country, though that would enable the aircraft to stay above their observation targets longer. The first armed US drone strike occurred in Yemen in 2002 against a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer USS. Cole. It was widely publicized and was damaging to the Yemeni administration.
Far more welcome to the Yemeni government are the ranks of US special operations trainers, up to 100 at any one time, who work with the country’s military. They concentrate on training members of two elite branches of government — the National Security Bureau, which is much like the US CIA, and Yemen’s Counterterrorist Unit.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday in Australia that the US could do more to help train Yemeni forces to combat terrorists. He was not specific, but officials told the Associated Press last week that military aid to Yemen would double to $250 million in 2011.
The hardest part is resisting the urge to “shove money and people” at the problem, one official said. Another challenge is to refrain from pushing so hard for more counterterrorist cooperation that they alienate the Saleh government and stall what Obama administration officials describe as their “whole of government” approach to Yemen.
Instead of looking at AQAP in isolation, they view the country’s problems as caused by a wider confluence of factors. The resulting instability has allowed AQAP a foothold in the country, according to two senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the strategy.
Feeding Yemen’s instability, they said, is an ailing economy where some three-quarters of the budget comes from oil revenues — which are running out. Almost half the population are teenagers or younger, below the age of 15, and many live on less than $2 a day.