CAIRO/SANAA: Yemen is ready to hold conditional dialogue with northern rebels and will listen to grievances, but will not talk to rebels with separatist demands, Yemen’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.
“There are conditions the government has laid out for dialogue with those carrying weapons in Saada. If they accept them, they can put their demands forward and they will be addressed,” Foreign Minister Abubakr Al-Qarubi said in Cairo.
“There will never be dialogue with those calling for separation,” he added, speaking after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
“The leadership in Yemen opens the door for dialogue with all factions under the umbrella of unity of Yemen ... on condition this dialogue is Yemeni and in Yemen,” Qarubi said, speaking on the day a Yemeni court sentenced 10 rebels to death.
The court jailed six others for 15 years in one of a series of trials of members of the rebellion.
The trials are of men captured during a monthlong fight at Bani Husheish, only 30 km north of Sanaa, last year. Two others were sentenced to death last week.
Fighting intensified in north Yemen in August when the army launched Operation Scorched Earth. President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said he is ready to fight the rebels for years if necessary.
The rebels said on Tuesday they had taken control of an airport at Razeh near the Saudi border. A government source confirmed that an airstrip had been lost to the rebels, but the Ministry of Defense said the army repelled the rebels at Razeh, killing 14.
