Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has tried to cover up US military strikes on Al-Qaeda in his country by claiming publicly they are carried out by Yemeni forces, according to US documents leaked by WikiLeaks. "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh said in January talks with General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the Middle East, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable published by the New York Times. The cable was sent by the US envoy to Yemen, the daily added. According to the report, these comments prompted Yemen's deputy prime minister to "joke that he had just "lied" by telling parliament" that Yemeni army had staged the strikes against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And during a meeting about Al-Qaeda with John Brennan, the US deputy national security adviser, the Yemeni leader was "dismissive, bored and impatient," according to another leaked American diplomatic cable published in The Guardian.
