FED: Ambassador heads to Yemen after conflicting reports

AAP General News (Australia)
12-31-1998
FED: Ambassador heads to Yemen after conflicting reports

By Valkerie Mangnall

ADELAIDE, Dec 31 AAP - A top-level Australian diplomat has been sent to Yemen to
investigate the hostage tragedy following conflicting reports of the incident in which a
Sydney man and three Britons were killed.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said today he had asked the Australian ambassador
to Saudi Arabia, George Atkin, to immediately end his holiday in Australia and go to Yemen.

Australian Andrew Colin Thirsk, 35, and three Britons were killed when Yemeni security
forces launched a raid on the hideout of Islamic militants who were holding 16 tourists
hostage. A Sydney woman, Catherine Spence, escaped unharmed.

"I've called him (Mr Atkin) back from holiday and asked him to return ... to Saudi Arabia
and then to Yemen straight away to do several things," Mr Downer told reporters.

"First of all, to investigate as best he possibly can the details of what happened, in
particular to Andrew Thirsk, but also of course to Catherine Spence and to the 16 people who
were held hostage.

"Secondly and very importantly, to emphasise to the Yemeni authorities that we would like
there to be a full and thorough investigation into this incident.

"Thirdly, to make the point that the Australian government regards with the greatest of
seriousness the killing of an Australian citizen and it is something that we will pursue with
great vigour and great determination."

Mr Atkin will leave Canberra this evening and arrive late tomorrow Yemen time.

"I think they (Yemeni authorities) will take our demands for explanations and our requests
for further information a great deal more seriously once we get our ambassador on the ground
there in Yemen," Mr Downer said.

Mr Downer said there were conflicting accounts of the incident coming from Yemeni
authorities and survivors.

The Yemeni government has defended its decision to launch the hostage rescue attempt, but
early reports from the hostages who survived the raid have blamed the attack for the four
deaths.

Mr Downer said there were suggestions that the kidnappers killed at least some of the
hostages and suggestions that some of the hostages were accidentally killed by Yemeni
authorities in the shootout.

"I suppose you could distil it down to a question of whether the Yemeni authorities were
told by the kidnappers that they would summarily execute the hostages one by one and therefore
the Yemeni authorities made a decision they had to launch some sort of a rescue mission and a
hostile rescue mission," he said.

"Or whether you accept that the rescue mission only exacerbated the situation and led to
the deaths of some of the hostages.

"That's not to say that the Yemeni authorities conducting the rescue mission necessarily
killed the four who were killed, again, there is some conflicting evidence about that, some
suggestions that the kidnappers killed at least some of the hostages, some suggestion that
some of the hostages were killed by Yemeni authorities, obviously accidental.

"Nobody's suggesting they did that on purpose."

Mr Downer said a consular official already in Yemen had been involved in briefings with
Yemeni authorities and had spoken to a very shaken Ms Spence in the city of Aden.

Ms Spence is expected to fly to London to meet a friend and then return to Australia in a
matter of days while it is unknown exactly when Mr Thirsk's body will be brought home.

Mr Thirsk's parents, Malcolm and Susan Thirsk, of Killarney Heights in Sydney's north, said
they were not bitter about the bungled rescue attempt.

"Personally, we're always going to wish they'd done something different ... we're not
bitter, but we wish it had been another way," Mr Thirsk told ABC Radio.

"Sometimes governments are going to draw the line in the sand and one day the Australian
government, I suppose, will have the same issue to cope with."

A spokesman for the British Foreign Office told AAP the British hostages were expected to
leave Yemen towards the end of the week and that British efforts to discover details about the
incident were also continuing.

AAP vm/it

KEYWORD: YEMEN KIDNAP AUST NIGHTLEAD

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