Western governments and Middle East states must work together to help Yemen develop because instability in the poverty-stricken country could create a zone of lawlessness from Kenya to Saudi Arabia, a prominent think-tank warned Wednesday.

The Yemen government and Shiite rebels are hampering efforts to channel aid to tens of thousands of civilians cut off or displaced by fighting, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

SANAA, Oct 13, 2007 (AFP) - Two people were killed on Saturday in clashes between opposition activists and police in southern Yemen on the eve of a political meeting, witnesses told AFP.

They said six people were also wounded during the violence in Al-Habilain 340 kilometres (210 miles) south of the capital Sanaa when police confronted opposition supporters.

The clash came ahead of an opposition-organised demonstration on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the October 14, 1964 uprising against British rule in what was then south Yemen.

SANAA, Oct 6, 2007 (AFP) - Yemen's interior ministry on Saturday warned political parties and professional associations against staging unauthorised demonstrations, the official Saba news agency reported.

Anyone who violates this rule 'will have to take the consequences,' it said.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest against rising prices in one of the world's poorest countries and to press for better public services.

HODEIDA, Yemen, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) - A volcano on a Yemeni island in the Red Sea was spewing a deadly mix of lava and ash for the third straight day on Tuesday, after erupting for the first time since the 19th century.

Yemeni authorities said three soliders had been killed during the eruption on the island of Jabal al-Tair, home to a garrison of 50 soldiers, and that five others were missing.

The garrison had been evacuated after the eruption of the 1,200 metre-high (3,937 feet) volcano, which began on Sunday at 12:00 noon (1000 GMT).

HODEIDA, Yemen, Oct 2, 2007 (AFP) - Yemeni authorities on Tuesday lowered the death toll in a volcano eruption on a Red Sea garrison island, saying three soldiers had been killed and five others were missing.

The bodies of three soldiers were recovered from the sea, while a fourth had been located alive, military official Abdel Bari Shamsan was quoted as saying by the official Saba news agency.

The official was speaking in the port city of Hodeida, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) from the island.

HODEIDA, Yemen, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - A volcano erupted on a Red Sea island, burning to death six Yemeni soldiers and sparking a major rescue operation for their comrades on the garrison island, the military said Monday.

Survivors evacuated to the Yemeni port city of Hodeida said four of the soldiers were killed outright when the volcano erupted on the island of Jabal al-Tair, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) away.

'Four of our comrades have died, burned by the lava,' said one soldier who was among the evacuees.

HODEIDA, Yemen, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - A volcano erupted on a Red Sea island Monday, burning to death at least four Yemeni soldiers and sparking a major rescue operation for the rest of its garrison.

Survivors evacuated to the Yemeni port city of Hodeida said the soldiers were killed outright when the volcano erupted on the island of Jabal al-Tair, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) away. Nine others were missing at sea.

Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh flew over the zone in a helicopter later Monday to assess the damage, the Saba news agency said.

HODEIDA, Yemen, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - At least four Yemeni soldiers were burned to death when a volcano erupted on a Red Sea island, soldiers evacuated to this port city said on Monday.

'Four of our comrades have died, burned by the lava,' said one soldier who was evacuated from the island of Jabal al-Tair, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Hodeida.

'They were killed immediately after the eruption of the volcano at 5:30 pm on Sunday (1330 GMT),' another soldier told AFP.

SANAA, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - Eight Yemeni soldiers were missing on Monday after a volcano erupted on a Red Sea island sparking a major rescue effort that was joined by the Canadian navy.

'Military personnel on the island of Jabal al-Tair were rescued by navy ships and the search continues for eight missing personnel,' Yemen's official Saba news agency said.

The Canadian navy said it joined the search after the eruption on the island, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) off the coast of Yemen.

OTTAWA, Oct 1, 2007 (AFP) - The Canadian Navy said it was looking for survivors following a volcanic eruption on a Red Sea island off the coast of Yemen.

The frigate HMCS Toronto 'is currently conducting a search-and-rescue operation, at the request of the Yemen coast guard, to locate nine people believed to be at sea after a volcanic eruption occurred on Sunday on the island of Jazirt Atta-Ir, about 140 kilometers from Yemen in the Red Sea,' the navy said in a brief statement.

DUBAI, Sept 28, 2007 (AFP) - The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Friday condemned a US Senate non-binding resolution to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines, saying it would complicate matters further in the war-torn country.

The Bosnia-style plan, which was touted as a way out of the sectarian strife which has risen steadily since the 2003 US-led invasion, 'would add new complications to the already difficult Iraqi situation,' GCC chief Abdulrahman al-Attiyah said in a statement.

SANAA, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Yemen's veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh has proposed cutting the presidential term by two years and abolishing the post of prime minister.

The president of the impoverished Arabian peninsula state would serve five years instead of seven and would assume all the powers of the abolished position of prime minister, Saleh said late Tuesday.

He has come under increasing internal and international pressure to introduce reforms in Yemen, which is one of the world's poorest states.

SANAA, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - Yemen on Monday signed a deal with Powered Corp of the United States to build nuclear power plants at an estimated cost of 15 billion dollars.

The agreement with the Houston-based company envisages the construction of five nuclear reactors over 10 years to produce nuclear power, Energy and Electricity Minister Mustafa Bahran told AFP.

'The overall cost of the project is estimated at 15 billion dollars. It features the construction of five nuclear reactors over 10 years,' Bahran said.

SANAA, Sept 22, 2007 (AFP) - Yemen will hold talks with US and Canadian investors on funding construction of a nuclear reactor in the Arabian peninsula country, Energy and Electricity Minister Mustafa Bahran said Saturday.

The negotiations, to be held in Sanaa next week, aim at 'a final agreement between the two sides' on launching the project to produce 5,000 megawatts of electricity and desalinate sea water, he told the official Saba news agency.

DUBAI, Sept 15, 2007 (AFP) - A senior Yemeni lawmaker said he was ready to reverse recent anti-gun legislation and arm people to combat secessionists demanding the separation of north and south Yemen, the Al-Khaleej newspaper reported on Saturday.

Head of the ruling General People's Congress party Abdel Kader Bajammal, who is also a former Yemeni prime minister, told the Emirati paper:

'I will arm the people to face them (seccesionists). For the sake of the state and its unity we will re-introduce weapons to confront those corrupt people.'

GENEVA, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - At least fifty-six people have died while trying to make the perilous Gulf of Aden crossing from Somalia to Yemen, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told journalists that a dozen boats carrying 925 Somalis, Ethiopians and others fleeing growing violence and insecurity in the region had arrived in Yemen since September 3.

SHINBIVALE BEACH, Somalia, Sept 13, 2007 (AFP) - As darkness casts its pall on Shinbivale beach, dozens of famished migrants emerge cautiously from cliff caves and start scrambling down towards the smuggling boats awaiting them.

They have come from all over East Africa to this remote creek near Bosaso, the economic capital of Somalia's autonomous region of Puntland, to earn a chance at 'tahrib,' the Arabic word for smuggling.

SANAA, Sept 10, 2007 (AFP) - Two people were killed and 18 wounded on Monday as Yemeni security forces clashed with protestors, in the second such deadly incident this month, the interior ministry announced.

It said 11 policemen were among the wounded in the clashes in the southern town of Dhaleh.

Some of the demonstrators were former soldiers who complained that they had been forced to retire early from the army after Yemen's 1994 civil war, witnesses said.

Others were protesting the rising cost of living in one of the world's poorest states.

SANAA, Sept 10, 2007 (AFP) - One person died and 10 were wounded on Monday when Yemeni security forces clashed with protestors in the second such deadly incident this month, witnesses said.

Police were among the injured in the clashes in the southern town of Dhaleh, the latest in a spate of demonstrations to grip the impoverished Arabian peninsula republic in recent weeks.

Some of the demonstrators were former soldiers who complained that they had been forced to retire early from the army after Yemen's 1994 civil war, the witnesses said.

SANAA, Sept 2, 2007 (AFP) - One person was killed and nine were wounded on Saturday during clashes between Yemeni security forces and demonstrators angry about rising prices in the impoverished state, a human rights groups said.

'The demonstrator was killed during disturbances that lasted several hours following the protest in the (southern coastal) city of Al-Mukalla,' said Hussein Basaleh, the head of a human rights group in the city.

He said one of those wounded in the clashes was in a critical condition. Other eyewitnesses said police made several arrests.

SANAA, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - Two foreign engineers and their local driver taken hostage by Yemeni tribesmen were released on Saturday following tribal mediation, the official Saba news agency reported.

The three, kidnapped on Friday in a row over a work contract, were named as engineers Athram Nafour Kaftar, an Indian-born Canadian citizen, Osama Mohammed Aslab, a Syrian, and their Yemeni driver Amaar Abdul Karim.

SANAA, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - Around 100 people were arrested in Yemen's southern city of Aden on Saturday while preparing to demonstrate for better benefits for retired personnel but most were later freed, witnesses and officials said.

Soldiers and police made the arrests while blocking access to a public square in the port city on the Arabian Peninsula to prevent protesters from staging a sit-in, several demonstrators told AFP.

SANAA, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - Scores of people in Yemen's southern port city of Aden were arrested while preparing to demonstrate Saturday for better benefits for retired military and civil service personnel, witnesses said.

Soldiers and police made about 100 arrests while blocking all entrances to a public square in the southern port city on the Arabian Peninsula to prevent protestors staging a sit-in, several demonstrators told AFP.

SANAA, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - Two foreign engineers and their local driver have been kidnapped by a Yemeni tribe because of a dispute over a work contract, the official Saba news agency reported on Saturday.

Saba identified the engineers as Athram Nafour Kaftar, an Indian-born Canadian citizen and Osama Mohammed Aslab, a Syrian, and the driver as Yemeni national Amaar Abdul Karim.

The men were kidnapped on Friday in the southern province of Abyan because of a dispute over an agreement between their firm and a contractor who belongs to a local tribe, Saba said.

SANAA, Sept 1, 2007 (AFP) - Two foreign engineers and their local driver have been kidnapped by a Yemeni tribe because of differences over a work contract, the official Saba news agency reported on Saturday.

The engineers, who were taken on Friday, were identified as an Indian-born Canadian citizen and a Syrian, while the driver is a Yemeni, Saba quoted a local official as saying.

SANAA, Aug 28, 2007 (AFP) - Thousands of protestors called for the Yemeni government to resign on Tuesday in the face of falling living standards and rising food prices in one of the world's poorest states.

Brandishing placards demanding: 'A new Yemen, a better future', the demonstrators also carried loaves of bread to symbolise the widespread poverty in this Arabian Peninsula republic as they marched through the streets of the capital.

Around 8,000 Yemenis held a similiar protest in the southern city of Taiz on August 15 to protest against soaring prices.

SANAA, Aug 28, 2007 (AFP) - A Yemeni journalist accused of having links to Shiite Muslim rebels was briefly kidnapped and beaten on Monday, a Yemeni journalists union said.

Abdelkarim Al-Kiwani, editor of the Al-Shura weekly of the Union of Popular Forces Shiite party, was bundled into a vehicle by an unknown group of men in Sanaa on Monday evening, a union official told AFP.

Kiwani telephoned work colleagues three hours later to say the men had attacked him and abandoned him in one of the city's southern districts, said the union official, who declined to be named.

SANAA, Aug 23, 2007 (AFP) - Yemen said on Thurday it had banned people from bringing privately owned firearms into major cities to stem crime and violence in a country with one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world.

Yemenis with licensed firearms in major cities will also be banned from carrying their weapons in public from next month, the interior ministry said.

Yemen has an estimated 60 million firearms in private hands, roughly three for every man, woman and child.

SANAA, Aug 19, 2007 (AFP) - Yemen's energy minister said on Sunday that international companies would build a nuclear reactor in the impoverished Arabian peninsula state, the official Saba news agency reported.

'International companies will undertake building... the nuclear reactor that Yemen aspires to own for peaceful purposes of producing electricity,' Mustafa Yahia Bahran said.

SANAA, Aug 17, 2007 (AFP) - Qatari mediators trying to broker a peace deal to end a Shiite uprising in Yemen were called home on Friday because of what a Yemeni official called rebel foot-dragging in implementing the plan.

'They were recalled for consultations after foot-dragging by (rebel leader) Abdul Malak al-Huthi in agreeing fully to implement the timetable' of the agreement, the official close to the talks told AFP, requesting anonymity.

TAIZ, Yemen, Aug 15, 2007 (AFP) - Thousands of Yemenis waving bread loaves staged a sit-in Wednesday in the southern town of Taiz to protest at soaring prices and demand better services in one of the world's poorest countries.

Tight security measures were in force during the protest organised by opposition parties outside the office of the governor of Taiz, 270 kilometres (170 miles) south of the capital Sanaa, an AFP correspondent reported.

SANAA, Aug 13, 2007 (AFP) - Shiite rebels in Yemen have accepted an implementation plan for a Qatari-brokered deal designed to end the uprising, a member of the committee overseeing the agreement said on Monday.

The rebels had given their 'preliminary agreement to the timetable' as had local authorities in northwest Saada province -- site of the rebellion by the minority Zaidi community -- the committee member said on condition of anonymity.

SANAA, Aug 13, 2007 (AFP) - Yemeni security forces on Monday arrested a number of suspects over a suicide bombing against Spanish tourists last month that killed 10 people, the interior ministry said.

A ministry official quoted by the Saba news agency said they were captured in a raid in the region of Moudia, in the restive province of Marib where eight Spanish tourists and two local drivers were killed in the July 2 attack.

However, he gave no details about the number of people arrested.

SANAA, Aug 11, 2007 (AFP) - A committee overseeing a Qatari-brokered deal supposed to end a Shiite rebellion in Yemen on Saturday laid out a 20-day implementation timetable and gave the rebels 48 hours to accept it.

The committee, which groups political parties represented in the Yemeni parliament, agreed during a meeting with Qatari mediators on the panel that the proposed timetable is 'final, binding and not open to amendment,' the official Saba news agency reported.

SANAA, Aug 11, 2007 (AFP) - Yemen's foreign minister on Saturday urged Fatah and Hamas to heal the rift between them on the basis of proposals by Sanaa aimed at restoring the unity of Palestinian political institutions.

'The initiative is before the Palestinian brethren so that they shoulder their responsibilities in healing the rift' between them, Abu Bakr al-Kurbi told the Yemeni defence ministry's website.

SANAA, Aug 10, 2007 (AFP) - A manhunt was under way in Yemen on Friday to track down an armed gang that struck government targets in the restive region of Marib the day after four Al-Al Qaeda suspects were killed by police.

'Those that carried out these operations are wanted security suspects and an investigation is underway to capture them,' an interior ministry source told AFP, without giving further details.

SANAA, Aug 9, 2007 (AFP) - President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Thursday sent his Palestinian counterpart Mahmud Abbas an initiative to resolve the crisis between Hamas and Abbas's Fatah,that has been accepted by Hamas, the official Saba news agency reported.

It quoted Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's exiled political supremo, who left Sanaa after a 24-hour visit on Thursday, as saying Saleh 'presented a series of proposals aimed at bridging the differences between Palestinians, resuming dialogue and restoring national Palestinian harmony.'