Yemen

President Mandela thinks that every living South African belongs there. Such talk wouldn't go in Serbia or Rwanda or parts of this country.Not that John Wayne Gacy should not have been executed. But of every 100 who are, usually none is a John Wayne Gacy and at least one is a mistake.The Southern Yemen army and the Northern Yemen army have declared war on the people of Yemen.Be patriotic. Bet the store on the Preakness, whatever is left over after all those Lotto tickets.

Oct. 12 1870 Gen. Robert E. Lee died in Lexington, Va., at age 63. 2000 Seventeen sailors were killed in a suicide bomb attack on the destroyer the USS Cole in Yemen.

Gen. Yehya Al-Mutawakil, 60, the deputy secretary general of Yemen's ruling party, was killed in a road accident there yesterday, the country's official news agency said. A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said three people traveling with Mr. al-Mutawakil also died.

WASHINGTON - Two suspected al-Qaida terrorists who broke out of a prison in Yemen last month have been indicted by the U.S. government on charges they helped carry out the 2000 attack on USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III described the indictment, unsealed yesterday, as a necessary step in securing the extradition of the fugitives if they are apprehended. "With today's indictments, they are now international fugitives, a status that increases the probability of their speedy capture," Mueller told a news conference at FBI headquarters.

SANA, YEMEN -- A lot of people were alarmed to see that Palestinians gave the terrorist Hamas organization an upset victory last week over the reputedly corrupt Fatah in parliament elections. But in this part of the world, any change of power through ballots instead of bullets is a good day. The big news just happened to find me also in the Middle East, but at the other end of the Arabian peninsula, trying to spread a little more democracy through freedom of the press, particularly to some courageous journalists in terrorism-tainted Yemen.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A well-coordinated attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen's capital yesterday morning left 16 people dead but was ultimately thwarted by security barriers and Yemeni soldiers, six of whom died in the car-bomb explosion and ensuing gunbattle. No American personnel were injured in the failed attempt by the attackers to breach the well-guarded compound's gates and to get near the building that houses U.S. officials. An obscure group called Islamic Jihad, unrelated to the Palestinian organization, claimed responsibility for the attack.

WASHINGTON - The deliberate killing of three American medical missionaries in Yemen by an Islamic militant Dec. 30 was a tragic but unusual event in an otherwise long and positive history of American missionary work in the Middle East. Motivated initially by strong religious desire to accomplish conversions of foreigners to Christianity, many of these missionaries provided medical or other services to the people they wanted to convert, eschewing proselytism. Not everyone understood that they had changed their mission to a nonreligious one. They believed they were doing Christian work by healing the sick, but a few in the community suspected that they also sought conversions and saw that as a threat.

MARIB, Yemen - Two suspected al-Qaida operatives made their way through this ancient tribal town in December. The Yemeni army, spurred by the U.S.-led war on terror, came looking for them. The local tribal militia was wary of the government troops on their turf. When a government fighter jet roared past, tribal fighters feared an air attack and opened fire. The first major battle in Yemen's U.S.-inspired campaign against terrorism consisted of 800 tribal warriors firing on 200 government troops.

WASHINGTON - - U.S. counterterrorism officials were looking at possible connections Saturday between al-Qaida-linked militants in Yemen and a 23-year-old Nigerian man charged with attempting to destroy a Northwest Airlines plane on its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. According to a criminal complaint and FBI affidavit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab carried a destructive device aboard Flight 253 on Christmas Day in what authorities said was an attempted terrorist attack that could have killed all 290 people aboard.

EMBARRASSED OVER the catch-and-release affair involving a Scud-bearing freighter in the Arabian Sea this week, the Bush administration yesterday learned the unpleasant -- but not wholly unexpected -- news that North Korea is planning to reactivate a nuclear power plant that could be used to produce material for nuclear bombs. So where do you prefer your blackmail? At sea in the Middle East, or on land on the Korean peninsula? North Korea is being unashamedly provocative on two fronts: It's dealing in Scud missiles with several of the world's more dicey regimes (some of them putative U.S. allies)