AFP - Yemeni security forces laid siege on Tuesday to a remote mountain town where tribesmen were holding hostage a German couple and their daughter, a security official said.
   
Police are determined to arrest and prosecute the tribesmen who kidnapped the trio on Sunday, the website of the defence ministry's newspaper quoted Colonel Saleh Dahmesh as saying.
   
He said police suspected a local tribal leader named Abd Rabbo Saleh al-Tam of masterminding the kidnapping in the Bani Dhabyan region, south of the capital Sanaa.
   
A Western diplomat told AFP that the German embassy had asked the Yemeni authorities not to resort to force to free its nationals.
   
Yemen's powerful tribes have abducted more than 200 foreigners over the past 15 years in a bid to extract concessions from the central government whose writ extends with difficulty over the countryside.
   
All have been freed unharmed except for three Britons and an Australian seized by Islamist militants in December 1998. They were killed when security forces stormed the kidnappers' hideout.
   
Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden where tribal traditions prevail, is one of the poorest countries on the planet and awash with weapons.