A U.S. military commander said today the United States will more than double its nearly $70 million security assistance program for Yemen, where a crackdown is underway on al Qaeda militants believed to be behind a failed plot to blow up a U.S. airliner, Reuters reported. U.S. officials have said they were looking at ways to expand military and intelligence cooperation with Yemen, the Arab world"s poorest state, to root out al Qaeda leadership in the country. "We have, it"s well known, about $70 million in security assistance last year. That will more than double this coming year," General David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, said at a news conference in Baghdad. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines plane as it approached Detroit with nearly 300 people on board. Washington has sharply increased training, intelligence and military equipment provided to Yemeni forces, helping them carry out air raids against suspected al Qaeda hideouts last month. The Pentagon"s main publicly disclosed counter-terrorism program for Yemen grew from $4.6 million in fiscal 2006 to $67 million in fiscal 2009. That figure does not include covert, classified assistance that the United States has provided.
