President Saleh is erratic & sensitive to criticism. But the US has no alternative but to continue engaging him ..."

WINEP/ here

"Yemen's reemergence in the headlines as a crucial player in the fight against al-Qaeda raises questions about Washington's next steps. What sort of relationship will the Obama administration have with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the longtime leader of what could be the world's next failed state? Saleh spoke with President Barack Obama by telephone on December 17, 2009, and later met in Sana with General David Petreaus, the head of U.S. Central Command, on January 2. But the lessons of Saleh's relationship with the Bush administration suggest that close ties can be matched by sharp policy differences.

Apart from Muammar Qadhafi of Libya, Saleh is the Middle East's longest-serving leader. Now a field marshal by rank, he first came to prominence in 1977 as a thirty-one-year-old major during political turmoil in what was then North Yemen (which united with South Yemen in 1990.) The country's military leader at the time, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, was assassinated, as was his brother, by unidentified gunmen who riddled their bodies with bullets. An Arab newspaper described it at the time as a well-planned coup, naming Saleh as a conspirator along with his mentor, Lt. Col. Ahmed al-Ghashmi, the deputy commander-in-chief of the army who became North Yemen's new leader. Al-Ghashmi himself survived an assassination attempt five days after taking power but was subsequently killed in June 1978 when the briefcase of a special envoy from South Yemen exploded in his office. A month later, Saleh was voted into office by the quasi-parliament as president and commander-in-chief; he survived yet another assassination attempt only months later.

Saleh showed himself to be skilled in political maneuvering by winning army support for his appointment. According to the 1986 Library of Congress handbook The Yemens: Country Studies, he had "no obvious qualification for the presidency and [was] neither highly educated nor widely experienced in government." His greatest accomplishment, other than merely surviving, was arguably the union of former communist South Yemen with North Yemen. This development worried neighboring Saudi Arabia, whose indigenous population remains less than that of Yemen. Riyadh's relations with Sana have been a key variable over the years. Prior to the merger, the kingdom's default position was to support the north. In 1994, however, the Saudis backed South Yemeni dissidents in an attempt to secede. From Riyadh's perspective, the fighting -- in which Saleh used sympathetic jihadist fighters, Scud missiles, and more conventional forces to crush the rebels -- was partly a consequence of Sana's support for Saddam Hussein after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. At the time, Yemen had been a member of the UN Security Council and had cast the only vote against the resolution permitting the use of force against Iraq.........

U.S.-Yemeni relations gradually recovered, but the 2000 al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole, at anchor in Aden harbor, was another blow. Tensions were exacerbated by poor Yemeni cooperation with FBI investigators and, later, by apparent government-sanctioned "escapes" of detained al-Qaeda suspects, including key plotter Jamal al-Badawi on two separate occasions (2003 and 2006). A further irritant was Sana's 2002 purchase of Scud missiles from North Korea. A Spanish naval vessel operating with a U.S. Navy-led task force intercepted the shipment, and the incident was depicted as a blow against the activities of a rogue state. But the sale did not breach international law, and Saleh insisted, against U.S. wishes, that the missiles be delivered.

......... Saleh ultimately maintains his position through control of the army, where his relatives hold top commands. His eldest son, Ahmed, is head of the Republican Guard and the special forces. Although seen as a possible successor, he is not deemed ready to assume power at the moment, nor need he be: Saleh is only sixty-three. One potential worry is that Gen. Ali Mohsen -- a key Saleh ally who has commanded the forces fighting the Houthi rebels -- is thought to oppose Ahmed taking any increased political role. Nevertheless, Saleh was boosted by Saudi-orchestrated support for him at the December 2009 Gulf Cooperation Council summit.

President Saleh is erratic and, reportedly, sensitive to criticism. But the Obama administration has no alternative but to continue engaging him. Failure to do so would risk terrible consequences. Yemeni officials deny that their country is becoming a failed state but are quick to use the possibility as a means of attracting Washington's attention. Admitting to the presence of thousands of al-Qaeda fighters was an additional gambit, now strengthened by apparent Yemeni links to the attempted December 25 bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit. General Petreaus's January 2 meeting was the most recent of what are regular high-level U.S. visits. Whether Washington can influence Saleh sufficiently without offering him another visit to the White House remains to be seen. And even that gesture would not rule out the possibility of further crises in the relationship."