Bin Laden Mentor Calls For Islamic State In Yemen
The New York Times reports:
SANA, Yemen — Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, maintained a tenuous hold on power on Tuesday, blaming the United States and Israel for protests across the Arab world, while a prominent radical cleric joined the growing crowds demanding his ouster and called for an Islamic state.
American officials expressed concern about the statement of the cleric,Abdul Majid al-Zindani, a onetime mentor of Osama bin Laden, which introduced a new Islamist element to the turmoil in a country where Al Qaeda is viewed as a grave threat. The protests that toppled leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and that now have spread to Libya, Bahrain and Oman have been largely secular in nature.
Mr. Zindani spoke on an open-air stage before several thousand antigovernment protesters, guarded by 10 men carrying AK-47s and shielded from the scorching sun by two umbrellas wielded by aides. “An Islamic state is coming,” he said, drawing cries of “God is great” from some in the crowd.
He said Mr. Saleh “came to power by force, and stayed in power by force, and the only way to get rid of him is through the force of the people.”
It was not clear how much support Mr. Zindani had among the protest movement.
As the opposition held what it called “a day of rage,” the pro-government camp mustered one of its biggest crowds in weeks of turmoil. Men danced in the streets, waving aloft traditional curved daggers and replacing their opponents’ slogan — “the people want the regime to fall” — with the words “the people want Ali Abdullah Saleh.”
Obama administration officials increasingly fear the power vacuum that they believe would follow if Mr. Saleh, whose son, nephews and close allies in the Sanhan tribe control the military and intelligence agencies, departed. Mr. Zindani has long supported Mr. Saleh, and his defection, which followed that of tribal leaders and a refusal on Monday by opposition parties to join a unity government, was a sign of how quickly the president’s patronage system is dissolving, a senior administration official said.
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