Obama cites apparent al-Qaida link in bomb plot – Yahoo! News

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 12:24 am

HONOLULU – An al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen apparently ordered the Christmas Day plot against a U.S. airliner, training and arming the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused in the failed bombing, President Barack Obama said Saturday.
In his most direct public language to date, Obama described the path through Yemen of Abdulmutallab. He also emphasized that the United States would continue its partnerships with friendly countries — citing Yemen, in particular — to fight terrorists and extremist groups.
Obama’s homeland security team has been piecing together just how Abdulmutallab was able to get on the plane. A top counterterrorism official said Saturday that al-Qaida and others extremists are working to test U.S. defenses and launch an attack on American soil.
The failed attempt against the plane “is the starkest of reminders of the insidious terrorist threats we face,” said Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. A senior administration official had said the United States increasingly was confident of a link between Abdulmutallab and an al-Qaida affiliate, but Obama’s statement was the strongest connection between the two. The official said regular updates from the White House Situation Room and from his homeland security advisers gave Obama enough confidence to use this radio address — typically, focused on domestic priorities — to communicate a stark message about Abdulmutallab.
It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaida, and that this group — al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America,” the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address. Officials have said Abdulmutallab’s father warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son had drifted into extremism in the al-Qaida hotbed of Yemen. Intelligence officials prepared for what was shaping up to be uncomfortable hearings before Congress about miscommunication among anti-terror agencies and sweeping changes expected under Obama’s watch.
Obama noted that in recent years, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen has bombed government facilities there as well as Western hotels, restaurants and embassies. The United States provided Yemen $67 million in training and support under the Pentagon’s counterterrorism program last year. Obama said the money had been well spent: “Training camps have been struck, leaders eliminated, plots disrupted. Petraeus arrived in Yemen on Saturday and met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Yemeni government official said. Security officials in Yemen said Saturday the government deployed several hundred extra troops to two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida’s main strongholds in the country and where Abdulmutallab may have visited.

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Obama address: http://www.whitehouse.gov

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