Gadaffi sets up meeting

Press, 3 July 1986, Page 10

Gadaffi sets up meeting

NZPA-Reuter London The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, had brought the Presidents of North and South Yemen together for their first meeting to discuss unification, Libyan radio reported yesterday. Colonel Ali Abdullah Saleh, of pro-Western North Yemen, and Haider Abubaker Attas, of Marx-ist-ruled South Yemen, flew to Tripoli are the first Arab heads of State to visit Colonel Gadaffi

since American bombing raids on Libya on April 15. The radio said both Yemeni leaders had declared they were ready to work towards achieving unity. North and South Yemen began merger talks in 1982 but the unification process was halted by factional fighting. North Yemen (the Yemen Arab Republic), on the Red Sea coast of the Arabian peninsula,

has a population of 8.5 million. Neighbouring South Yemen, (The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen), a former British colony granted independence in 1967, has just under two million people. Libyan radio did not say exactly where the meeting was held. Diplomats in Tripoli had said Colonel Gadaffi, because of security fears, was not spending much time in the capital.