By Maha El Dahan and Samia Nakhoul

DUBAI, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The withdrawal of Emirati forces from Yemen following a Saudi airstrike may help defuse a confrontation between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but the incident has exposed simmering distrust between two Gulf oil powers with long-running differences.

The airstrike by a Saudi-led coalition early on Tuesday on the southern Yemeni port of Mukalla was followed by calls on all UAE forces to leave Yemen, and a statement from Riyadh that its national security was a red line.

The UAE said it was surprised by the strike, shortly before announcing that it was pulling its remaining forces from Yemen for their safety.

The crisis, precipitated by the surprise advance of UAE-backed separatists through southern Yemen in early December, brings to the surface years of divisions between the two Gulf heavyweights on everything from oil quotas to geopolitical influence.

A Gulf source familiar with Saudi thinking told Reuters that the escalation had been triggered by a misperception resulting from talks in Washington in November between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and U.S. President Donald Trump about the war in Sudan.

High-level talks including phone calls between Saudi Arabia and the UAE had taken place since December though they had not yet yielded results on the ground, the source said.

Any further conflagration between Saudi Arabia and the UAE would bode ill for the financially powerful Gulf, which prides itself on being........

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