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| Arabia |
| Yemen forms committee for peace drive with rebels |
| 2008-02-08 |
| Yemen has formed a new committee made up of prominant political and social figures to help end an on-off insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives, state media reported on Thursday. President Ali Abdullah Saleh set up the committee to work with a team of Qatari mediators to enact a Doha-brokered peace deal agreed upon last June, a weekly newspaper published by the Yemeni defence ministry reported. The deal between the rebels and the Sanaa government has not been implemented and sporadic fighting has since resumed in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world. The 13-member committee includes Ali Nasser Qarisha, who was a representative for the rebels at talks with the Yemeni government in Doha on February 1 where both sides agreed to revive the peace process. Zaidi rebels have been locked in intermittent fighting with government forces in the north of Arabian Peninsula state since 2004. Their aim is to restore the Zaidi imamate, which was overthrown in a 1962 republican coup. They reject the current regime as illegitimate, although Saleh is himself a Zaidi. An offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis are a minority in mainly Sunni Yemen but form the majority in the northwest. |
| Posted by:Fred |