A meeting of Western and Gulf foreign ministers is aiming to bolster Yemen's fight against al-Qaeda by helping it to tackle the poverty that can create a breeding ground for militants.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the meeting after a Yemen-based al-Qaeda affiliate said it was behind a failed attempt to blow up a US-bound plane with 300 people on board.
The 25 December attack drove home how al-Qaeda could threaten Western interests from Yemen and highlighted the risk that it could become a failed state, compounding security challenges already posed by lawless Somalia just across the Gulf of Aden.
Today's London talks, which bring together the Group of Eight world powers, Yemen's neighbours in the Gulf Co-operation Council, and Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, is designed to support Yemen, while pushing for economic development and reform.
The EU, UN, World Bank and International Monetary Fund will also be represented.
‘Yemen is not a failed state but it's an incredibly fragile state,’ British Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis said in a video on a government website.
‘We want to get in there early to offer assistance and to prevent Yemen becoming a failed state,’ he said.
The meeting, scheduled to start at 4pm and last just two hours, would focus on helping the Yemeni government move its economy forward, creating jobs and improving health, education and law and order, he said.
