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US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday completed his tour of the Horn of Africa and left for the Gulf state of Qatar.
His last port of call in the Horn was the tiny Red Sea nation of Djibouti where he visited some 1,000 US troops stationed there. The numbers are expected to be boosted in the coming days.
"We need to be where the action is," he told them. "This part of the world is an area where there is action."
The US believes that members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network have found refuge in Yemen, across the Bab al Mandab strait from Djibouti. Rumsfeld's whirlwind tour of the Horn of Africa this week also took him to Eritrea and Ethiopia where he discussed the global war against terror with leaders of the two countries.
In Djibouti, he also held talks with President Ismail Omar Guelleh and said he was satisfied with that country's cooperation.
Speaking en route to the Horn earlier this week, Rumsfeld said the war against terrorism "absolutely requires the cooperation of countries of all sizes on each continent on the face of the earth".
"The three or four day trip that we're embarking on is very much about the global war on terrorism," he added. "The fact that we're going to Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Qatar is an indication that it is global."
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