From Sandra Johnson
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Saturday with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud to discuss the imminent expiration of the UN-mediated truce in Yemen on Sunday, the State Department said.
“The Secretary welcomed Saudi Arabia’s commitment to extending the truce,” the State Department said in a statement after their call.
Yemen has been split by a seven-year-old war pitting a fractious coalition led by Saudi Arabia against the Iran-aligned Houthi group. The Houthis largely hold the north and the internationally recognised government is based in the south. A UN-mediated truce between the coalition and the Houthis has largely held since April. Last month, sources told Reuters that rifts within Yemen’s new presidential council were delaying approval of reforms needed to unlock $3 billion in financial aid from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that would help ease a severe foreign exchange crunch.
Saturday, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen announced that attempts to reach an understanding during a six-month ceasefire with Saudi Arabia that expires Sunday had reached a “dead end.” The truce was reached in April between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen and extended twice since. The Houthis stated that they had “exercised restraint” to ceasefire violations and delays in an effort to reach a peace agreement, but stressed that they did not “feel any seriousness” in the efforts to address humanitarian issues.
“Unfortunately, it became clear that the aggression countries, after they had exhausted all their cards, had no choice but to target the livelihood of the Yemeni people as the easiest way to bring the people to their knees and use it as a military tactic and a war tool to pressure them,” said the Houthis’ negotiating delegation.
“It became clear that their desire is not peace as much as it is to keep the countries of aggression away from the repercussions of the war and direct targeting and besiege them inside Yemen, and to transfer the war to the economic field, and the continuation of their siege and the imposition of unjust restrictions on the Yemeni people to prevent access to their legal and humanitarian entitlements.”
“We affirm the right of our Yemeni people to defend themselves and their rights and to confront aggression and siege, and we hold the countries of aggression responsible for reaching understandings to a dead end as a result of their intransigence and disavowal measures that have no aim other than to alleviate the human suffering of our dear Yemeni people.”
