Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said Thursday that only his personal intervention had dissuaded the United States from occupying the southern port city of Aden after the bombing of the destroyer USS Cole there in October 2000. "There was a plan to occupy Aden," Saleh said in a speech to mark the anniversary of the former south Yemen's independence from Britain in 1967. "By chance, I happened to be down there. If I hadn't been, Aden would have been occupied as there were eight U.S. warships at the entrance to the port," he said. "The tension was enormous but we succeeded through our diplomatic efforts and firmness in preventing what was about to unfold and had been planned." Seventeen U.S. sailors were killed in the suicide attack by militants aboard a small boat packed with explosives, which was later claimed by Al-Qaeda. Saleh lashed out at the Islamist network whose leader Osama bin Laden counts Yemen as his ancestral homeland. "These terrorists are causing their country great misfortune; they're damaging the economy and tourism," the president said. "They chant: 'Death to America,' 'Death to Israel,' but these slogans are misplaced, because they are really chanting: 'Death to the Homeland.'"