Yemen demands Iran halt insurgent support
2013-02-08 09:28
Sanaa - Yemen's president has asked his Iranian counterpart to stop backing
armed groups on its soil after coastguards seized a consignment of missiles and
rockets believed sent by the Islamic Republic, a government official said on
Thursday.
Iran has denied any connection to the weapons, found aboard a vessel off the
coast on 23 January in an operation co-ordinated with the US Navy.
But government official Abdel-Rashid Abdel Hafez said President Abd-Rabbu
Mansour Hadi had contacted Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to demand
Tehran stop smuggling in weapons. Hafez gave no further details of the message.
"This is the most dangerous arms shipment being smuggled to
Yemen," Yemeni Deputy Interior Minister Abdel-Rahman Hanash told Reuters.
"It contained anti-aircraft missiles, C4 high explosives materials which
only a few countries in the Middle East possess."
Yemen, a majority Sunni Muslim country, said last week the vessel had been
loaded in Iran.
Calls for investigation
Yemen has complained to the UN Security Council and asked for the weapons
shipment to be investigated by the council's group of experts that monitors
compliance with the Iran sanctions regime.
It includes a ban on arms exports, UN special envoy to Yemen, Jamal Benomar,
said on Thursday.
The council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran for refusing to
halt its nuclear enrichment programme, which the United States, European Union
and their allies suspect is at the heart of a weapons programme. Iran rejects
the allegation and refuses to halt what it says is a peaceful energy programme.
"The shipment contains weapons and some of the weapons are
sophisticated weapons, surface to air missiles, for example. The government
made a request to the sanctions committee for a full investigation,"
Benomar told reporters.
"They [the sanctions committee] will establish the facts on what
happened, where the shipment came from, who were the recipients, et
cetera," he said.
Accusations
The 15-member council is also discussing whether to issue a US-drafted
statement on the weapons shipment.
Officials in Washington have said the shipment was believed to have been
from Shi'ite Muslim Iran and destined for insurgents, likely to be Shi'ite
Houthis mainly based in northern Yemen.
Yemeni state television on Wednesday showed Interior Minister Abdul Qader
Qahtan and National Security Board head Ali al-Ahmadi inspecting the weapons
including 122mm Katyusha rockets, anti-aircraft Strella 1 and 2 missiles, RPG
launchers, explosives materials and Iranian-made night vision goggles.
Hanash said that while the investigation into the shipment was still under
way, it was certain that the weapons were destined for an insurgent group. He
did not name the group.
A source at Hadi's office said the arms were destined for Houthi rebels.
Strained ties
The discovery of the shipment will likely further sour ties between Tehran
and Sanaa, already strained over charges that Iran was working with separatists
in the south and Houthi rebels in the north to further destabilise Yemen as it
tries to rebuild after two years of political upheaval.
Yemen said in July it had rounded up a spy ring led by a former commander in
Iran's Revolutionary Guard, according to the state news agency Saba.
Washington also believes Iran was working with Yemeni insurgents to expand
its influence at the expense of Yemen's Gulf Arab neighbours, according to
comments by the US envoy to Sanaa published in the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper
last year.
Iran has denied interfering in Yemen, a US ally in its fight against al-Qaeda
militants.
The Houthi movement, named after the tribe of its leader, says it represents
the claims of Zaydi Shi'ite Muslims who ruled Yemen for more than 1 000 years.
Most Iranians follow a different Shi'ite sect but Yemeni officials say Houthis
have travelled to Iran's seminary city of Qom for indoctrination.
Houthis have survived repeated government attempts to crush them. They
fought a brief war with Saudi Arabia in 2009 after their conflict with Yemeni
forces spilled across the border.
