Sana'a, Yemen  - Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa made a brief visit to Sana'a on Saturday in the first leg of a tour aimed at healing the rifts among Arab states exposed by the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Moussa held talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on "efforts to achieve inter-Arab reconciliation and solidarity," Yemen's state news agency Saba reported.

Sanaa  - Yemeni security forces arrested three suspects, including A Kuwaiti national, in a crackdown on militant groups linked to terror acts, official sources said Friday.

The Interior Ministry said in a brief statement that the three suspects, aged between 20 and 25, were captured in the north-central province of Marib.

The two-line statement said one of the suspects was an Arab man, without giving further details. A Defence Ministry online newspaper said the non-Yemeni suspect was a Kuwaiti national.

Sana'a, Yemen - Unide

Sana'a, Yemen - A Yemeni court of appeals on Monday upheld a death sentence for a Shiite rebel and jail terms for 12 others for plotting attacks in support of rebels who fought army forces in northern Yemen for more than four years.

The court confirmed the initial death sentence against the main defendant, Ja'afar al-Merhebi, who was convicted of killing two police officers when they raided his house in the capital Sana'a in 2007.

Presiding judge Muhammad Said al-Hakimi said the court also upheld prison sentences of 10 years for four men and terms of eight years for two others.

Sana'a, Yemen  - Yemen announced on Thursday a new initiative calling on the disputing Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas to resume dialogue and form a national unity government.

Based on a previous Yemeni initiative, the plan calls for the resumption of dialogue between all Palestinian groups, mainly the two main rivals.

The new plan, published by the state media, proposes that the dialogue be sponsored by Egypt, Syria and Turkey.

Sana'a, Yemen  - The governor of Yemen's south-eastern province of Shabwa has vowed to pursue tribesmen who abducted a German oil expert and two Yemeni engineers, the official Saba news agency reported on Wednesday.

"Security apparatuses are determined to pursue all those involved in the crime of kidnapping the German engineer and to arrest them at the earliest," the agency quoted the governor, Ali Hassan al-Ahmadi, as saying during a meeting with the freed hostage.