United Nations: Yemen’s foreign minister blamed Iran and its support for Al Houthi rebels on Monday for causing the country’s civil war and said it can’t be part of the solution.
Abdul Malik Al Mekhlafi said at a press conference that Iranian weapons are still being smuggled into Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s UN ambassador, Abdullah Al Mouallimi, whose country supports Yemen’s internationally-recognised government, said Iran isn’t a neighbor or part of the Arabian Peninsula and he had a more direct message: “Iran should get the hell out of the area, period.”
The Saudi and Yemeni officials spoke to reporters after a presentation to UN diplomats on the path to peace and humanitarian aid to Yemen.
Yemen, which is on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has been engulfed in civil war since September 2014, when Al Houthis swept into the capital of Sana’a and overthrew President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s internationally- recognised government.
In March 2015, a Saudi-led coalition began a campaign in support of Hadi’s government and against Al Houthi forces allied with ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Since then, the Iranian-backed Al Houthis have been dislodged from most of the south, but remain in control of Sana’a and much of the north.
The war in Yemen has killed over 10,000 civilians and displaced 3 million people. UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said Friday that 17 million Yemenis don’t know where their next meal is coming from, nearly 7 million are facing the threat of famine and almost 16 million lack access to clean water and sanitation.
The World Health Organisation said last week that 2,000 people have been killed and an estimated 500,000 infected in a cholera outbreak.
Al Mekhlafi said that “the Yemeni government ... will not be an obstruction to peace.” But he said the Al Houthis and Saleh “cannot monopolise power.”
The two diplomats reiterated Yemeni and Saudi support for a proposal by UN envoy Esmail Ould Shaikh Ahmad to reopen Sana’a airport for commercial flights and to hand over the port of Hodeidah to a committee of “respected Yemeni security and economic figures” that would use the port revenues to pay civil servants.
The Al Houthis have not accepted the proposal, but Ould Shaikh Ahmad said Friday he hopes their leaders will accept his invitation to meet in a third country to discuss the proposals.
The Saudi ambassador warned diplomats to beware of three “fallacies” about Yemen.
First, Al Mouallimi said, supporting a cessation of hostilities “actually means the de facto partition of Yemen and the consolidation of a reactionary movement that is tied with Iran in the north part of Yemen and a weak Yemeni state in the southern part of Yemen.”
“This is no recipe for sustainable peace,” he said, stressing that any cease-fire has to be linked to implementation of a 2015 UN Security Council resolution demanding that the Al Houthis withdraw from all areas they captured, hand over arms seized from military and security institutions, and stop all actions falling within the authority of the legitimate government.
Al Mouallimi said the second fallacy “is that we must all sit around the table and talk.”
He said there have been talks “everywhere,” including Geneva, Kuwait, Moscow and Saudi Arabia. Yemen’s recognised government has shown willingness to move forward with a political settlement, Al Mouallimi said, while the Al Houthis have rejected Ould Shaikh Ahmad’s proposal and refused to meet him.
The third fallacy, he said, is that people often seem to think that “a disastrous humanitarian situation, a catastrophic spread of cholera” afflict all of Yemen.
But “all of that is concentrated in one part of Yemen which is controlled by the Al Houthis,” he said. Al Mouallimi said the entire world, especially Saudi Arabia, is ready to provide aid but he said the Al Houthis are unable or “sometimes maybe unwilling” to manage and distribute aid.
Looking ahead, Yemen’s foreign minister predicted that “in the end,” the parties will get to the place where they started—when the end of a national dialogue in January 2014 all political parties agreed on a road map for a political transition.
But unfortunately, to get there Yemenis will have “paid a high price for peace,” Al Mekhlafi said.
