Al-Qaida's Yemeni branch could launch attacks on U.S.

Washington, May 18 (ANI): A report prepared by an American think tank has warned that terror network Al-Qaida could lauch a "spectacular attack" against the United States or U.S. interests from Yemen.

"If the organization is seeking to attack us, it's actively seeking to attack us, and it will try to attack us this year," claimed Katherine Zimmerman, the study's co-author and analyst at the American Enterprise Institute at a panel discussion in Washington on Tuesday.

"For the U.S., the most dangerous situation comes from what (Yemen-based) al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has gained from the unrest," the China Daily and the Xinhua news agency quoted her, as saying while referring to the current anti-government protests that have swept the Arab world and spilled over into Yemen.

The al-Qaida group in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of the organization founded by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan by U.S. forces earlier this month, has staged attacks against the United States in the past.

The most notable was a foiled plot launched on Christmas Day 2009, in which an operative attempted to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear on a flight bound for Detroit.

The report, entitled "Crisis in Yemen and U.S. Objectives," also argued that Washington could experience backlash for any backing of current Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, should the government change hands.

Yemeni protesters continue to call for his resignation in the third month of demonstrations, while Saleh urged the opposition to stop "playing with fire," media reported. .S. forces have conducted drone strikes on parts of the country in a bid to kill key members of AQAP, one of the latest being an attack that killed two suspected members of the organization but missed the intended target, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Frederick W. Kagan, co-author of the report and one of the architects of the U.S. surge in Iraq, said the current U.S. approach is unlikely to meet much success.

While U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has admitted that Washington had no plans on the table for a Yemen without Saleh, former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Edmund J. Hull believes there is a strategy that needs prompt implementation.

He believes the United States so far has had a workable approach for Yemen. (ANI)