RIYADH: Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal will attend an international conference concerning Afghanistan and Yemen in London on Thursday. The conference will discuss strategies to stabilize and ensure peace in both countries. The reconciliation and reintegration of militants, how to ensure peace and security and possible measures to solve the problems will top the meeting agenda.
“Prince Saud will attend the London conference which will be preceded by a ministerial meeting in the British capital concerning Yemen,” said Osama Nugali, a spokesman at the Foreign Ministry, on Wednesday. He said: “Afghanistan and Yemen will be the subjects of the talks at the London conference that has been convened by British Premier Gordon Brown. More than 61 countries and a dozen organizations will attend the conference.”
Among those attending will be Abdulrahman Al-Attiyah, secretary-general of the GCC, and GCC foreign ministers in addition to the representatives of a number of countries, regional organizations and international bodies.
“The need to coordinate responses to the threat within Yemen is why the Afghanistan-Yemen meeting in London makes sense,” said a GCC official. The GCC supports any solution that contributes to ensuring Yemen’s security, unity and stability, as well as peace and security in Afghanistan, said a report.
Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mujawar is leading a delegation to the London meeting; the delegation also includes Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi.
The London conference will seek to encourage donors to help the Yemeni government to combat terrorism. It aims at political and economic reforms in Yemen. It will also focus on finding a political solution to security challenges in Afghanistan, the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.
He said that the influx of foreign troops into Afghanistan was intended to complement a corresponding military surge to prop up the Afghan government.
