Leaders of Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen pledge greater cooperation in fight against terrorism
By ANTHONY MITCHELL Associated Press Writer
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Dec 29, 2003 (AP) — The leaders of Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen pledged Monday to increase their cooperation in the fight against terrorism in a region cited by the United States as a possible haven for international terrorists.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who hosted the one-day summit, said the countries will share information and their experience in combating terrorism in bid to track down members and supporters of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network operating in the Horn of Africa.
Yemeni President Ali Abudllah Saleh, whose country at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula is regarded as a hotbed for militant groups, described terrorism “as a plague that threatens the security of all humanity.”
“We must cooperate to fight terrorism,” he said.
Meles said security forces in the three countries are already working together.
“Our cooperation has focused on exchange of information with regard to terrorists operating in either one of these three countries or in the region as a whole,” he said.
Meles and Saleh were speaking to reporters after they and Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir signed a tripartite treaty in which they also agreed to greater political and economic cooperation.
The Horn of Africa traditionally includes Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia; Yemen is separated from the region by the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
Both Sudan and Yemen have links to bin Laden; he lived and conducted business in Sudan in the early 1990s, and Yemen is his ancestral home.
Ethiopia shares a long and porous border with lawless Somalia and is viewed as a key U.S. ally in a region plagued by instability.
Meles said an Islamic Somali group, Al-Ittihad al-Islami, listed by the United States as a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida, “continues” to be a threat.
Al-Ittihad members openly operate as a religious organization in Somalia, which has not had an effective central government since 1991, but its members publicly renounce violence.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the United States has set up a military base in Djibouti from which to lead its fight against terrorism in eastern Africa, where al-Qaida has carried out several attacks.
In August 1998, car bombs destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 231 people; in October 2000 suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole while it was refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 American sailors; and in November 2002 attackers tried to shoot down an Israeli airliner as it took off from Kenya’s Mombasa airport, minutes before a car bomb destroyed a hotel on the Kenyan coast, killing 15 people.
The summit Monday was the first among the three leaders since they agreed to greater cooperation at a meeting in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, in October 2002.