Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi has said that the Yemeni government will talk to al-Qaeda if it renounced violence and abandon terrorist acts.
In an interview with Sky News, al-Qirbi said that the Yemeni government has not unmanned drones and it takes support from the United States' drones in combating terrorists.
He indicated that the Yemeni army could defeat al-Qaeda in some towns of Abyan and Shabwah, affirming that al-Qaeda militants are still existed in some areas.
He affirmed that President Abdu Rabo Mansour Hadi and the interim government will continue the battle against al-Qaeda militants and that the government will deal with them as citizens in case they were persuaded to abandon violence.
After the Yemeni government announced its victory in early June, al-Qaida carried out a suicide bombing various governorates and killed the commander of Yemen's southern military region, Salem Qatan.
At least eight militants were killed in an airstrike in Yemen’s Hadramout province amid a continuous, massive hunt for Al-Qaeda operatives across the republic, the defense ministry reported on Friday.
On Thursday, a Yemeni intelligence officer, Yahya Badi, was assassinated by an armed man riding a motor cycle in Sana'a.
Yemen's defense ministry claimed that the attacker is a member of al-Qaeda, pointing out that he could escape.
The shooting came the same day a security official said a U.S. drone attack killed at least four suspected Islamist militants in a car in a remote province of eastern Yemen.