Nigerian tied to Ft. Hood cleric....

The would-be terrorist met Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen...

Yemen's government says a Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner last month met with a radical U.S.-born Muslim cleric in Yemen last year.

Yemen's deputy prime minister for defense and security says Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab met the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, in the southeastern province of Shabwa. The Yemeni official, Rashad al-Aleemi, was speaking Thursday to reporters in Sana'a.

U.S. authorities say the cleric also had ties to a U.S. military psychiatrist charged with murdering 13 people in a shooting rampage at a U.S. military base in the southwestern U.S. state of Texas in November. They say Awlaki communicated with the suspect, Major Nidal Hasan, who is a Muslim, by e-mail in the months before he opened fire on soldiers preparing for deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. authorities say Awlaki is an al-Qaida supporter.

Yemen's government carried out an air strike targeting Awlaki and other suspected al-Qaida members in Shabwa last month. It said 34 militants were killed, but it is not clear if Awlaki was among them.