JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday the US and Saudi Arabia were cooperating closely on security, and both shared a deep concern about Yemeni militant activities.
"We all share a concern about terrorist activity emanating from Yemen. Actions of the US in Yemen are with the consent (and) cooperation of the government of Yemen," Napolitano said after meetings with King Abdullah and other top Saudi officials.
She told journalists Washington was helping Saudi Arabia develop security along the rugged, porous Saudi-Yemen border, across which militants smuggle weapons and operatives into Saudi Arabia.
"It is a very rough border... very difficult to protect from illegal crossings... so many of our discussions were about how to protect a very tough, geological, topographical border from illegal crossings," she said.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden and the home base of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which has claimed responsibility for a failed Christmas airliner bomb plot over Detroit in the United States.
