US to Reopen Mideast Embassies Except in Yemen on Sunday

The United States said Friday it would reopen all of the embassies it shut this week except the one in Yemen, after re-assessing the Al-Qaeda threat.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington would also keep its consulate in the Pakistani city of Lahore closed, after pulling out staff on Thursday.

US embassy in SanaaThe United States had closed some two dozen embassies and consulates since August 4 after reported intelligence intercepts from Al-Qaeda suggested an attack was imminent.

Psaki said that 18 of the 19 embassies and consulates subject to the week-long closure would reopen on Sunday.

“Our embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, will remain closed because of ongoing concerns about a threat stream indicating the potential for terrorist attacks emanating from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” Psaki said.

“Our consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, which closed due to a separate credible threat to that facility, will also remain closed,” she added.

Psaki said the United States would keep monitoring threats in Sanaa and Lahore as it decides when to reopen the missions.

President Barack Obama, speaking earlier Friday at a news conference, said that the United States was trying to strengthen countries’ capacity to “fight local branches of Al-Qaeda”.

“This tightly organized and relatively centralized Al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 has been broken apart,” Obama said. “And it is very weak and does not have a lot of operational capacity.”

But Obama pointed to dangers of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a unit of the extremist group that effectively controls parts of Yemen.

“We still have these regional organizations like AQAP that can pose a threat,” he said.