SANA'A – Yemen has launched a $1.2 billion fund to give back tens of thousands of southern Yemenis jobs they lost after the 1994 civil war, a minister said on Tuesday, part of efforts to revive talks aimed at ending longstanding political divisions. International Cooperation Minister Mohammed Al-Sa'adi said the fund, agreed on Sunday, had persuaded southern separatists to return to talks they boycotted last month in protest against the government's handling of their demands. Restoring stability to Yemen, which shares a long border with top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, became an international priority after a US-backed power transfer deal eased veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh out of office in November 2011. Sa'adi said Qatar would contribute $350 million to the fund, which will be used to rehire or compensate tens of thousands of civil servants and soldiers sacked after North Yemen won the civil war. But a source at Qatar's foreign ministry declined to confirm if Qatar had pledged the $350 million. Yemen's President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi and the United Nations envoy to the country, Jamal Benomar, had approached Qatar for financial support in recent months. Yemen was expected to ask international donors to cover the remaining $850 million at a meeting in New York on Sept. 25. “Part of the assurances is setting up a special fund to deal with tens of thousands of southerners who were expelled from their jobs under Saleh's rule from their civilian and military jobs,” a diplomat said. A separate fund will be set up to address the issue of property seized since the war, which erupted four years after North Yemen merged with the south, the diplomat added. – Reuters
