Yemen told Britain yesterday a kidnapped British oil worker was safe and well and negotiations with tribesmen holding him hostage had started, according to the British ambassador.
Mr Victor Henderson did not have details but said "the interior minister told me negotiations had started with the kidnappers".
A British embassy official said the envoy had been assured force would not be used to rescue Mr John Brooke (46), an employee of US oilfield services firm Halli burton Co.
A Yemeni official said a senior member of a Yemeni tribe was negotiating Mr Brooke's release and authorities hoped he would soon be freed.
Yemeni officials said the kidnappers were demanding the release of a fellow tribesman arrested on charges of sabotage. "They have demanded the release of one member of their tribe arrested by the Yemeni authorities for sabotage and highway robberies," an official said.
Mr Brooke was kidnapped in an area east of Sanaa on Saturday - two weeks after four hostages were killed.
The four hostages, three Britons and one Australian, were killed during a shoot-out between militant Islamists and Yemeni government forces. But Yemeni officials say the latest kidnap is not related to the killings.
Yemen's Al-Ayyam newspaper reported yesterday that the kidnappers "belong to the Al-Juayd tribe and are demanding the liberation of the murderer of a sheikh of the Bani al-Hareth", a rival tribe.
"The murderer had fled to Najran", a Saudi province near the border, "and was extradited to Sanaa, from where he was transferred to a prison in Marib" where he is still held, the Aden-based newspaper said.
"I am deeply concerned by this latest distressing event in Yemen," the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, said on Saturday.
"It serves to reinforce the message I gave to the Yemeni Prime Minister . . . that it is vital that the two governments co-operate closely."
Britain twice summoned Yemen's ambassador to London to express its dissatisfaction over not receiving a full account of last month's shoot-out. It was the first time hostages in Yemen had been killed.