Saudi Arabia on Thursday accused its neighbor and ally, the United Arab Emirates, of helping a separatist leader wanted on treason charges to escape Yemen, a claim that escalates a festering rift between two regional powerhouses.
The separatist leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, leads a group called the Southern Transitional Council, which has been pushing for an independent state in southern Yemen, with Emirati backing.
Saudi intelligence determined that Mr. al-Zubaidi fled Yemen on a boat to Somalia early Wednesday morning and that he took took a plane from there to the Emirates, according to Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen.
A spokesman for the Southern Transitional Council, Anwar al-Tamimi, said by phone that the coalition’s statement was false and that Mr. al-Zubaidi remained in southern Yemen. The Emirati government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Times could not immediately confirm Mr. al-Zubaidi’s whereabouts.
The Saudi allegation was an unusually pointed salvo in the increasingly bitter feud between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, two key U.S. allies.
That feud has escalated since Mr. al-Zubaidi’s group led a lightning offensive across southern Yemen last month, seizing strategically located, oil-rich territory. Saudi officials denounced those moves, which encroached on a region bordering the kingdom, saying they threatened national security. This past weekend, forces allied with the internationally recognized Yemeni government recaptured most of the territory, plus some additional areas, with Saudi support.
The fighting has effectively become a proxy clash between Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, in which Yemen’s sovereignty and the fate of its population, already suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes, hang in the balance.
On Wednesday, officials from the Southern Transitional Council arrived in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, after an invitation for talks about their secession bid. But Mr. al-Zubaidi was not among them, despite a Saudi demand that he attend. Soon after arriving in Riyadh, the delegation became unreachable, their colleagues in Yemen and in the Emirates said.
The separatist group said in a statement on Wednesday that its delegation of about 50 people had been “arbitrarily detained and taken to an unknown location by the Saudis.”
The Saudi government did not respond to requests for comment on the delegation’s whereabouts.
On Thursday morning, Mohammed al-Jaber, the Saudi ambassador to Yemen, posted a photograph showing him with more than a dozen members of the delegation.
“We discussed the moves that the council made under the direction of Aidarous al-Zubaidi, which harmed and did not serve the southerners’ cause,” Mr. al-Jaber posted. “We spoke about how to work together in the future to fix what happened.”
Mohammed al-Ghaithi, a member of the delegation, said in a social media post on Thursday that the delegation “valued the efforts of our brothers in Saudi Arabia to invite us and host a conference on southern dialogue.”
But Amr al-Bidh, a senior official for the Southern Transitional Council who was not part of the delegation, said by phone that the delegates were still unreachable.
Repeated efforts on Wednesday and Thursday by a New York Times reporter to reach three of the delegates on their cellphones — including Mr. al-Ghaithi — were unsuccessful.
After the delegation arrived in Riyadh on Wednesday, the Yemeni government appeared to have taken back most of southern Yemen that had still been under separatist control, including in the southern capital, Aden.
The recapture of territory amounted to an effective collapse of the separatists’ bid for an independent state, at least for now.
As events unfolded on Wednesday, Mr. al-Zubaidi’s whereabouts remained unclear. The Southern Transitional Council said that he had stayed in Aden to stand with his people. The Saudi-led military coalition initially said that he had fled to his home region, Al Dhale, in southwestern Yemen.
But on Thursday, General al-Maliki said that Saudi intelligence had learned that Mr. al-Zubaidi had fled to Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital, transiting via Somaliland with the Emirates’ help. The Emirati government has cultivated close ties to Somaliland, a breakaway state strategically located in the horn of Africa, roughly 200 miles by sea from Aden.
A Saudi-owned newspaper, Arab News, published a photograph of Mr. al-Zubaidi on its front page on Thursday, under a banner reading, “Wanted.”
Saudi Arabia and the Emirates once partnered in a disastrous bombing campaign in Yemen trying to oust the Houthis, an Iran-backed militia that took over the Yemeni capital more than a decade ago.
But they ultimately failed, leaving the Houthis in control of much of northern Yemen. The internationally recognized government fled south. Since then, Yemen has been divided, with southern Yemen controlled by a patchwork of groups. The most powerful among them was the Southern Transitional Council.
It is unclear why the Emirates backed the group. Some analysts speculate that the Emirati leadership would like to hold sway in Yemeni ports located on global trade routes. Emirati officials say only that they stand by Yemenis’ rights to security and self-determination.
Yemen was divided into two countries for much of its modern history, before uniting in 1990.
Saeed Al-Batati contributed reporting from Al Mukalla, Yemen.
Vivian Nereim is the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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