ALGIERS, (Reuters) – Yemen is in danger of following  Afghanistan down the path to becoming a safe haven for Islamist  militants, the European Union’s anti-terrorism chief said in an  interview yesterday.

Three foreign women were found dead in Yemen this week after  they were kidnapped by an armed group, heightening long-standing  fears the country could slip into chaos and provide a launchpad  for militant attacks.

Gilles de Kerchove, the EU’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator,  said he had recommended that Yemen be ranked alongside Pakistan  and the northern Sahara as regions that harbour threats to  European interests.

“I was in Yemen a month ago. It’s a state that really needs  to be assisted. It is confronted with many challenges and we  have to avoid Yemen becoming another safe haven or another  Afghanistan,” de Kerchove told Reuters.

“It’s a weak state, so indeed we have to mobilise the  international community to avoid that happening,” he said on the  sidelines of a counter-terrorism conference in the Algerian  capital organised by the CAERT research centre.

Security analysts say they believe some al Qaeda militants,  seeking new bases of operations after being squeezed out of  Saudi Arabia and Iraq, are heading for Yemen.

The Arab world’s poorest state, Yemen is already struggling  with al Qaeda militancy, along with with tribal rivalries and  secessionist sentiment in the south, home to most of the  country’s oil facilities.

If instability there deepens, al Qaeda could use it as a  launching-pad for new attacks on neighbouring Saudi Arabia and  further afield. Lawlessness in Yemen could also be exploited by  pirates targeting shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden and the  Horn of Africa.

De Kerchove said the EU was concerned by the release this  month by a Pakistani court of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder  of a militant group accused of last year’s attack on the Indian  city of Mumbai.