Dangers at Yemen port known

Thursday, Oct. 19, 2000 | 11:36 a.m.

SUN WIRE REPORTS

ADEN, Yemen -- Investigators widened their probe into the bombing of the USS Cole to Saudi Arabia and to a far eastern Yemeni province known for its outlaw tribes, Yemeni officials said today as the FBI director arrived and toured the warship.

Meanwhile the former U.S. military commander in the Persian Gulf region in Washington said today that the Yemeni coastline is a "sieve" for terrorists. But it was the best option available for refueling Navy ships, he said.

Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command at the time the Pentagon contracted for refueling services in the Yemeni port of Aden in December 1998, took responsibility for the decision.

"I pass that buck on to nobody," he told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Meanwhile the Navy announced that it recovered today the final four sets of remains of the 17 sailors killed in the blast. Thirteen bodies already had been flown home to the United States. The final four that were removed from the ship will be flown home soon, Navy officials in Washington said.

At a Washington news conference, Attorney General Janet Reno said the United States is doing all it can to help the Yemeni police in their investigation. She would not say whether any eventual prosecution might take place in Yemen. The United States apparently has no arrangements with Yemen to extradite suspects, but could still seek to prosecute anyone arrested for involvement in the bombing.

FBI director Louis Freeh held talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and later told a news conference that his agency is supporting Yemen's investigation in a "junior" role and is in the country by invitation. He complimented Yemeni authorities' police work in the case.

Freeh said he toured the U.S. warship, which was attacked as it arrived to refuel Oct. 12, and described the crime scene as a "tangled mess of metal and wire."

The FBI director said it was far too early to speculate who may have sponsored or be responsible for the bombing, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39. "We are looking at this with an open mind," he said.

While the Senate committee began to examine the circumstances behind the Navy's use of Aden as a refueling stop, the Pentagon was preparing to move ahead with its own investigation.

A retired Navy admiral, Harold W. Gehman, and a retired Army general, William Crouch, will head an independent investigation of security practices on the USS Cole at the time the ship was hit by an apparent terrorist attack Oct. 12.

Zinni, who retired earlier this year, said he and the rest of the American government were well aware that terrorists use Yemen as a transit route into Saudi Arabia.

"Their coast is a sieve," he said.

Yet there were no better alternatives and Navy ships must refuel in that area while moving to and from the Persian Gulf, Zinni said. The port of Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa and just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, had been used but the refueling contract there was terminated in about 1997 because the facilities were unsatisfactory and "the threat conditions were far worse."

That left him with "options that were not very good," Zinni said.

The retired general told the committee that he personally checked on the refueling arrangements in a series of visits to Aden between May 1998 and May 2000.