By Nasser Arrabyee/31/08/2009
The Yemen Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al Querbi said Monday his country would take "hard decisions" against Iran if it did not stop supporting Al Houthi rebels.
The Minister said he handed a memo to the Iranian ambassador to Sana'a and one to the Iranian Foreign Ministry in which he informed them about Yemen's protest over Iranian support for the rebels.
"We brought it to the notice of the Iranian government that their media discourse does not serve the interest of the bilateral relations between the two countries," said Al Querbi in a press interview published Monday by the ruling party paper Al Methaq.
"And if the Iranian media wishes to keep as a tool in the hand of the Sa'ada saboteurs, this will have negative reflections on the Yemeni-Iranian relations, the matter which may push Yemen to take hard decisions," he added.
Meanwhile, the military officials denied Monday Al Houthi allegations that they captured the post of Taiban in Al Malahaidh at the borders with Saudi Arabia where the rebels try to block the highway between the two countries.
"The allegations are untrue and baseless and they come only in the framework of the lies and propaganda which aim to cover the defeats inflicted on the rebels…," said statement by the Ministry of Defense.
The rebels' leader, Abdul Malik Al Houthi had said in a statement Sunday that the rebels captured the military post of Taiban in the Al Malahaidh area in Sa'ada and his fighters seized the weapons and ammunition there.
The army says it defeated the rebels in many areas as it adopted a new military tactic which matches with the guerrilla war of Al Houthi rebels.
"The army used this tactic and defeated the rebels and inflicted heavy damages on them in Thuaib, Shada, Kuzan, and Farwah," the military statement said.
The aircrafts continued to bomb the main strongholds of the rebels in Dhahyan, Mutrah, Naqa'a and Saqeen in Sa'ada for the last 20 days.
In a new development in this scorched earth operations, a total of 20 people were killed including 13 rebels when Al Houthi rebels attacked the house of the tribal Sheikh Hussein Al Ahmar in Khamer, south of Harf Sufyan, Amran province, tribal sources said.
Sheikh Hussein Al Ahmar dismissed the attack as untrue and baseless. Al Ahmar's tribal army is coming from Hashed tribe, the most influential tribe in Yemen.
"This is untrue information, there was no confrontation around my house, the tribal army is fighting with the State against the rebels, and it does not settle accounts with any one," said Hussein Al Ahmar who is leading a tribal army against the rebels,
Al Houthi rebels accused Al Ahmar of using the war to settle tribal accounts with them.
To this end, military sources said Monday that new enforcements have arrived in Harf Sufyan in Amran area where the army tightens the noose on the rebels to secure the road between Sa'ada and Sana'a. The army says dozens of Al Houthi fighters surrendered themselves over the last two days.
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