Yemen ready to talk to Qaeda if they disarm

Yemen's president Ali Abdullah Saleh said he is open to dialogue with al-Qaeda militants, as a top official warned that dozens of foreign Jihadis are grouping in a remote part of the impoverished country.
"If al-Qaeda (militants) lay down their arms, renounce violence and terrorism and return to wisdom, we are prepared to deal with them," Saleh told Abu Dhabi TV in an interview carried by Yemen's Saba news agency on Sunday.
"We are prepared to deal with anyone who renounces violence and terrorism," he said.
Washington has urged Yemen to crack down on al-Qaeda after the local franchise of Osama bin Laden's network said it was behind a Christmas Day botched bombing on board a US airliner.
Saleh, whose country is also facing a Shiite rebellion in the north and a movement for autonomy in the south, stressed the government will crack down heavily on those who resort to violence.
"They are a threat not only to Yemen but also to international peace and security, particularly al-Qaeda. They are ignorant, drug dealers and illiterate. They have no relation with Islam," he said
The governor of southern Shabwa province, Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi, meanwhile was quoted Sunday as saying dozens of al-Qaeda fighters, among them Saudis and Egyptians, have streamed in from Afghanistan to join local members of the Jihadi network in lairs carved out in the province's rugged Kour mountain.
"There are dozens of Saudi and Egyptian al-Qaeda militants who came to the province," Ahmadi told the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily.
"This is in addition to Yemenis who came from Marib and Abyan (provinces) and a number of militants from Shabwa province itself," he added.
Among them, he added, are the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Nasser al-Wahishi, his number two, Saeed Ali al-Shehri, a Saudi, and radical US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.