KUWAIT CITY, Feb 2 (AFP) - Saudi Interior Minister Nayef bin Abdel Aziz slammed his Yemeni counterpart for issuing a passport to Saudi dissident Mohammad al-Massari, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
"The Yemeni interior minister (Hussein Arab) asks me for help in many security issues and I respond immediately, but in return he grants Massari a passport," Prince Nayef said, quoted in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai Al-Aam.
Massari is spokesman for the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, an Islamic group founded in 1993 by academics and Islamists who accuse the Saudi ruling family of "corruption and anti-democratic methods."
The committee, which has since split in two, is banned in Saudi Arabia.
Massari, a professor of physics, fled to Britain via Sanaa in 1994, traveling on a Yemeni passport to which British immigration authorities said at the time he was not entitled.
The British government tried but failed to deport Massari to the Caribbean island of Dominica in 1996. Instead, he was granted permission to stay in Britain for four years from April 1996.
Prince Nayef's criticism came at a time of strained ties between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, with reports appearing in Sanaa newspapers of clashes on their disputed border.
"We have nothing but good intentions and want this problem solved today, either by mutual agreement or arbitration," the interior minister said, denying any Saudi encroachment into Yemeni territory.
The two largest states in the Arabian peninsula have made little progress in demarcating their 2,500-kilometre (1,500-mile) border since launching negotiations in 1995.
