Sudan supports Yemen’s unity and stability

September 20, 2009 (KHARTOUM) – Sudanese government said supporting Yemen’s unity, security and stability

The Yemeni government troops are engaged in heavy fighting with Shiite Huthi rebels since August 11 in a bid to crush the rebellion which first erupted in 2004.
The rebels from the Zaidi Shiite minority are accused by the government of wanting to restore the Zaidi imamate which ruled the country until being overthrown in a republican coup in 1962 that sparked eight years of civil war.

Sudanese Presidential Adviser, Mustafa Osman Ismail returned from the Yemeni capital Sana where he met with the Yemeni President Ali Abdalla Saleh carrying a message from President Omer Al-Bashir.

Ismail said he carried to the Yemini leadership a message expressing Sudan’s full support against plots that targeting Yemen’s unity and stability. He further stressed on the need for a political solution.

He also said the Yemeni vice president and the Secretary General of the ruling Yemeni Popular Congress Abd al-Rab Mansur will be in Sudan to attend the conference of the National Congress Party next month.

The United Nations says that 35,000 people have been displaced over the past few weeks and that food is running low in Saada town, which has been encircled by the rebels and cut off from the rest of the country.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that in all 150,000 have been displaced over the past five years.

Yemeni President Saleh said that two groups of rebel fighters currently on trial had confessed to receiving funding from Shiite Iran totaling up to 100,000 dollars.

“We could not accuse the official Iranian side, but the Iranians are mediating and are contacting us to show their willingness to mediate as they are in contact with them (the rebels),” Saleh told Al-Jazeera television.

However Iran’s government brushed off the accusations, saying it supports the unity of Yemen.

(ST)