WMD?

(Reuters) – A vow made in a phone call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to carry out an attack that would “change the face of history” lay behind this month’s closures of many Western embassies, Yemen’s president said.

In the first public disclosure by a government leader of details of the intercepted call that prompted the U.S. alert, President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi said AQAP head Nasser al-Wuhayshi made the pledge to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri on July 29.

Many U.S. and other Western diplomatic missions in the Middle East, Africa and Asia closed temporarily as a precaution.

Wuhayshi spoke by phone with Zawahri, who is believed to be based in Pakistan, while attending a meeting of 20 al Qaeda leaders in Yemen’s Maarib province, Hadi said.

“When I was in Washington, the Americans told us that they had intercepted a call between Ayman al-Zawahri and Wuhayshi, in which Wuhayshi told Zawahri that they would carry out an attack that would change the face of history,” the president told police cadets in remarks which state television aired on Friday.