1. He was always on friendly terms with the Saddam regime’s heads. Chemical Ali and vice president Izzat Ibrahim al Douri were frequent visitors to the presidential palace in Sanaa. In December 2002, weeks before the war, Salah, always on the lookout for profitable deals, put together a plan for a North Korean freighter carrying illegal Scud missiles for Iraq to secretly unload its cargo in a Yemeni port and have it transported overland to Iraq. The plan did not come off. A Spanish vessel acting on information relayed by US spy satellites intercepted the North Korean ship in the Indian Ocean before it reached Yemeni shores. It was boarded by US special forces and the missiles impounded.
And now he’s stuck with a ship load of missiles that we’ve got the serial numbers of.

2. Salah believes that providing ex-Saddam regime insiders with sanctuary adds to his credibility in his secret dealings with al Qaeda and lends him an image boost in the Arab world. At the same time, he claims to the Americans that this posture helps him maintain contacts with Osama bin Laden’s people for the purpose of gathering intelligence.
Playing both sides, a very dangerous game.

3. Salah’s overriding and constant motivation is the profit factor. Iraq’s evicted regime leaders arrive in Sanaa with bags of money, some smuggled out of Iraq, some salted away in secret Arab, Persian Gulf and European bank accounts. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that in the last two months, the Iraq expatriates of Sanaa’s Little Baghdad have deposited an estimated $350 m in Yemeni banks. There is most certainly more to come. The Yemeni president has high expectations that the vast sums of Iraqi cash reposing in Syrian banks will follow the affluent Iraqi refugees and end up in Yemeni banks.
With the appropriate donations to his bank acount from the grateful affluent refugees.