Almotamar.net - President Ali Abdullah Saleh described the Yemeni-German relations as of good friendship, distinguished and developed and that there is similarity in the relations of the two countries in their unitary experiment. He pointed out that each of the two countries has restored its unity after years of division at approximate time, especially after the collapse of the Socialist System.

That came in a lecture delivered Thursday by the President at the headquarters of the German Friedrich Ebert Organisatioin in Berlin. The lecture was attended by many political, cultural and academic activities and members of the Arab-German and Yemeni-German Friendship Societies, media men, businessmen, and a number of Arab and foreign ambassadors to Germany.

At the beginning of his lecture the President said," I pleased to talk to you in Berlin the capital of unity, freedom and democracy on the latest developments in the Yemeni arena and review the situations in the Middle East region. We in Yemen had restored our unity in 1990 with peaceful ways despite what accompanied it of events and crises in the years 199 and 1993 and ended with the war of 1994 that lasted for 77 days and we had paid a high price for this unity, very dear blood for us and that resulted in destruction of the Yemeni economy that sustained loses of more than $11 billion in a poor country with mediocre income and increasing number of population. "

The President added ," Nevertheless, the freedom and democracy triumphed and we scored victory over the forcers of secessionism and apostasy, the unity stabilized and the pluralist political system took hold. The post-22 May 1990 regime was founded on freedom, democracy, the woman participation, respect of human rights and the freedom of the press and that initiative was an unfamiliar step in the region and therefore came the events of the years 1992,'93 and '94, but thank God the system of the Yemen Republic settled in, it is the outcome of the Yemen Arab Republic and the Yemen Democratic Republic. And it is a regime based on political multi-party system and democracy. At the present there are about 22 political parties and independents and there are real democratic institutions under which the parties contest legally and genuinely, not with 99.9% but rather a transparent and free democracy under which the parties compete via programmes. "

President Saleh said after the referendum on the constitution of the republic of Yemen 3 parliamentary pluralist elections took place and direct presidential elections for two terms in a competition between the General People's Congress party (GPC) and the opposition parties of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) represented in the parliament, the latest of which were the elections of 2006 that were free and transparent under the presence of international observation where more than international organisations had took part.

The president added , " Despite that our country is poor but we are rich with our human wealth and the population increase forms a problem for us as the growth rate exceeds 3% and this population explosion devours all the limited revenues of oil, gas, taxes and customs in addition to our exports of fish wealth and honey. The population is more than 2 million people and whenever there is improvement in revenues they are devoured by the population explosion. " the president maintained ," We are exerting an effort with our brethren and friends, especially in the Gulf, to help us and the London donor conference was held in November and the outstanding contributors in it were the Gulf states, mainly Saudi Arabia, and some friendly countries from the European Union, among them France, Britain, Germany and Holland. Yemen has been offered about $5 billion over five years for the implementation of development projects especially in the infrastructure and in the framework of fighting poverty and ending unemployment among the youth. We have begun implementation by 30% of the grant we obtained and the rest is under consideration. At the forefront of the donor countries are the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is the biggest donor country and next to it are Qatar, the Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain. "

The President added, "As we have talked the population increase represents a big problem for us and for our revenues. We used to produce 400 thousand barrels of oil but the production has begun to gradually reducing and we have not produced but 300 thousand barrels and part of it foes to local consumption and the remainder of production we share between the government and the investing companies working in production. "He added that the oil companies working in Yemen are 32 companies from different nationalities; British, American, French, Canadian and others and " we call on sisterly and friendly countries to investments in Yemen and we believe if investments come that would alleviate in the economic aspect. We do not want pumping money into the central bank but want investments providing job opportunities for the youth and we have areas promising with oil and minerals and we call also for investment in the industrial zones especially in the free zone."

"We have spoken much about terror and in more than one meeting and said the military and security campaign could not uproot terror. The United States of America, which is a big power and the superpower in the world could not take out terror from Afghanistan, though supported by allies from the European Union, among them is Germany. In our view in Yemen the elimination of terror comes through fighting poverty and that the rich countries should give hand to the poor countries, not just in Yemen but in many developing countries in Asia, Africa, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, Egypt and other countries. If the rich countries moved with strong will for the fight on terror they have to direct their investments towards the poor countries for establishing development and job opportunities and that is what fixes security and puts an end to terror, " president Saleh added. He said," We say to these countries come and invest and that is partnership, to be partners in the Middle East and Africa not just partners in receiving your products and goods and to become a market for them. So in order that there is security, stability and world peace that requires an effort by the international community. The military campaigns would not succeed. America and its allies in Afghanistan and Iraq have not succeeded. "

The president said," Afghanistan is the main station from where has come the terror we are suffering from today in Yemen, Iraq and Somalia after some countries, among them America, encouraged the government of Taliban for taking over power and before that when America and with it European countries were pushing the youth to go to Afghanistan to fight communism there. Those youths went back to their countries with their minds full of violence and extremism and here we are at present suffering on the region, as France, Britain and Spain and in many other areas as a result of convictions deep-rooted among those youths returning from Afghanistan. Then came the Taliban regime and some countries such as America asked us to recognize that regime and we told them they were youth and lacking experience but regretfully they encouraged that extremism from which now all countries are reaping this violence as a result of that policy. "

"In fact we have learned freedom and democracy from America and Europe and we talk with transparency and without anger that this policy we are now paying its price. Taliban was ended in Afghanistan and the coalition has come and it is now in Afghanistan to eliminate terror," the president added.

As for the situation in Iraq the President said, "We tell the coalition forces in Iraq and ask why they do not call for dialogue between all the political forces the same way when Germany called for dialogue among the political forces of Afghanistan? It was relatively a correct plan and made a correct brick for the afghan regime. It is true it did not solve the problem but laid a basis for a political regime to be dealt with. We tell all the countries present in Iraq why don't you call on all the political parties in Iraq, whether sectarian or others, for dialogue as taking into consideration that who solve the problems of Iraq are its sons? We tell them have dialogue among yourselves for the sake of your homeland and stop violence and participate in building Iraq. If you were saying that during the former regime in Iraq there were hundreds of victims now the victims are in thousands fall due to violence there but the western media do not deal with the situations as they did during the former regime that they called the dictatorial regime."

President Saleh said," We talk about the conflict in the Middle East and our view in Yemen is that its key is in the hand of Israel, i.e. in Israel's implementation of the resolutions of the international legitimacy related to the Arab Israeli conflict and the establishment of the Palestinian state on the land of pre-5 June 1967. I think there is an international will for peace and not for igniting fires for the sake of arms sales because unfortunately there are states and companies that do not want the spots of tension in the world to be extinguished and those companies can achieve their interests within the frame of peace and without their exports to be in arms. So as an international community we have to press for the establishment of the Palestinian state beside the Israeli state. It is not true that the Arabs and the Muslims are against the Jewish religion but there must be dialogue among religions and civilizations for peaceful coexistence and each human believes in the other, meaning you believe in my existence as a Muslim and I believe in your existence as a Jew or Christian and you should not attack my beliefs as some newspapers in Denmark publish and we do not see denunciation from any one in Europe about that.

They are offending our beliefs and our Prophet Mohammed, the last of Prophets and by that they provoke feelings of more than one billion Muslims. This causes elements of conflicts among believers in religions and civilizations, therefore, I affirm the importance of respecting the religions and beliefs and to be keen to build bridges of communication and dialogue and we should keep away from such offending behaviours that do not serve peaceful coexistence among believers of religions and would increase the gap between civilizations."

President Saleh added, " We have talked to our friends in the European Union and told them what is published in some newspapers is an offence against our sanctities and offends them in the first place. Of course they have interests with the Islamic nation and we are also connected to interests with them and therefore we have to tell Denmark this is a wrong way and must all stand against it. "

The president then spoke about the economic and administrative reforms that Yemen has adopted and the successes it has achieved in this regard saying," We have a programme for comprehensive reforms and achieved distinguished results at the level of consolidating the building of the national economy and combating corruption, separation between powers, encouragement of the civil society organisations on active participation in serving development within the framework f the democratic pursuit Yemen follows in addition to that we have a local authority that contributed to enhance the people's participation in making decision. Moreover, we have at present serious tendencies to make constitutional amendments to give more powers to the local authority and the direct election of the governor and heads of administration nits by the people as well as providing local rule councils with more local revenues. The amendments also target the establishment of parliamentary bicameral by the establishment of two chambers for parliament and the shoura to be elected by the people and that would expand the people's participation. The parliament includes 301 elected members in accordance with constituencies distributed according to the population density while the election of the 151-member shoura council will be through distribution of membership on equal basis among the provinces. "

President Saleh pointed out that Yemen suffers from terror as is the case with many countries as the terrorist acts had inflicted grave damage on the Yemeni economy especially that its resources are limited. He said when a terrorist act happens in a Yemeni area tourism stops and that affects investments negatively despite that the security forces managed to strongly confront the terrorists. He said, "We felt world praises of the successes Yemen achieved in the democratic field and the field of its partnership in combating terror but we hope that this appreciation would result in offering more support for the development efforts in Yemen and encourage the investor to head for the available promising sectors, among them oil and gas and others."

He said Yemen has solved its border problems with its neighbours in a civilized way by bilateral negotiation and international arbitration " we had a border issue with Saudi Arabia, considered the longest border problem, but when the political will was available in the two countries the problem was solved. " he added " Also, we had a problem with the Sultanate of Oman and we solved it. A problem emerged in 1995 and that was Eritrea's occupation of the Yemeni island of Hunaish in the south of the Red Sea and there was a regional and international massing up for the war between us and Eritrea. But those tempests did not affect us and decided to go to international arbitration and that everything could not be solved by military force because that would lead to war and blood would be shed and that was clear at the negotiating table. Such things happen in all conflicts where people go to war and engage in conflict then in the end they sit at the negotiating table. "

President Saleh said, "We have now economic problems and nevertheless we receive thousands of Somali refugees who flow into Yemen and unfortunately international organisations are absent because those refugees arrive via Yemen coasts that are more than 2200 km long and they spread in all villages and countryside areas of Yemen although we have allotted areas for their gathering so that international and human organisations can give m them the care and help. At the present we have so many thousands of those refugees and for us they constitute an economic, social and security burden. We call on the European Union and all other countries to help the Somali government for building the Somali state so that Somalia would not become another station like Afghanistan for exporting terror and we have to tackle the problem of Somalia while it is at the beginning before it aggravates but many countries make one step in this regard and take more than one step backward. We wonder today which is better the regime of Siad Barre that you describe as tyrannous or this security chaos where there is fighting between brothers from one village to another and from one street to another. ?

After his lecture President Ali Abdullah Saleh replied to question asked by the participants. In response to a question by the Chairman of Friedrich Ebert Foundation on what issues and subjects he discussed with the German Chancellor and the President, President Saleh said," The talk with the German President, the Chancellor and the Defence Minister was frank and transparent and we have found full understanding on the relations and increase of assistance to Yemen, especially in education and technical and vocational institutes, cooperation in the security area especially in fighting terror and the military area, offering a number of medical grants and operation of hospitals, assistance in the field of teaching in the military technical institutes and we have also discussed what I have mentioned in this lecture on developments in the Middle East and terror . In brief and conviction the talks were successful and useful. "

On opportunities of investment in oil and minerals in Yemen and facing the population increase and youth qualification, the President said," we call on rich friendly countries and our brethren neighbouring countries to help us develop education especially the technical and vocational for qualification of the youth and providing job opportunities so that if Yemeni labour headed for labour markets in neighbouring countries it will be qualified and not to be a burden." He pointed out that the German Chancellor promised him that Germany will finance building a number of technical and vocational instates in addition to the existence of a number of institutes that are under construction and financed by Saudi Arabia and Japan. With regard to the population increase he said the media, religious scholars and politicians in Yemen are playing their guidance role in enlightenment. Concerning the investment opportunities the President said the benefit will be mutual.