The message, dated Jan. 9, relates the worries of a Yemeni official, whose name was removed, about the unguarded state of a National Atomic Energy Commission facility. He pushes the US embassy to urge his own government to secure the material.
“Very little now stands between the bad guys and Yemen’s nuclear material,” the official is quoted as saying in the cable, which appeared on the website of the British Guardian newspaper.
Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, hosts a particularly active branch of Al-Qaeda that has not only repeatedly attacked the Yemeni government but attempted several attacks against the US including last year’s failed plot to blow up an airliner in Detroit on Christmas.
On Jan. 7, Yemeni Foreign Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi told the ambassador that “no radioactive material was currently stored in Sanaa and that all ‘radioactive waste’ was shipped to Syria.” According to the cable, the radioactive material was used by local universities for agricultural research, Sanaa hospital and by international oil companies.
The facility’s lone guard was removed on Dec. 30, 2009, reported the cable and its single closed circuit TV camera had been broken for the last six months.
The cable said the embassy would push senior Yemeni officials to provide an accounting of its radioactive materials and ensure storage facilities were secure.
The dispatch was sent in the aftermath of the plot to bomb a plane trying to land in Detroit on Christmas Day last year and describes the worried official imploring the US to help find a swift solution to the problem.
Yemen is home to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the failed bid on Dec. 25, 2009, to blow up a US-bound airliner.
