DUBAI, Dec 2: Sanaa and Washington have agreed on the arrest of at least two people in Yemen suspected of belonging to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was quoted as saying Sunday.

“There are suspicions around some people whose names have come up, and they are two or three people currently being followed by security services,” Saleh said in an interview with the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

“They will be arrested ... because they are believed to be members of the al-Qaeda network” according to information provided by the United States, he told the London-based Saudi daily.

Saleh however denied that the suspects had links with the suicide bomb attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen in October 2000 which left 17 US sailors dead.

“No, they have no hand in it. They are accused of belonging to the al-Qaeda network,” he said in an interview from Paris where he met French President Jacques Chirac on Friday, following visits to Washington and Berlin.

Saleh had told a Kuwaiti newspaper last week that some 25 people had been arrested in connection with the USS Cole attack.

Saleh said in the Asharq al-Awsat interview that Yemen had delayed the suspects’ trials, so as not to hinder the US investigation into the attack, whose primary suspect is Saudi-born Osama.

“Washington asked us to delay the trial in order to complete the investigation and get more information on elements it believes have taken part in this incident, and who are still at large outside Yemen,” he said. —AFP