– U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has met with Saudi King Salman in the Red Sea city of Jiddah ahead of talks focusing on the conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Libya with other Gulf Arab officials, the Associated Press reports. Instead, the announcement of a new plan was greeted by rocket attacks from Al Houthi forces that struck well over the border, hitting a power station in Saudi Arabia.
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The conflict between the Sunni government of Yemen and the Houthi rebels has gone unchecked, says Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations human rights chief. Kerry said the Houthis would be required to give up their heavy weapons to a third party, including ballistic missiles from Iran deployed at Saudi Arabian borders.
Kerry “will raise our concerns about civilian casualties and damage to civilian targets inside Yemen”, the USA official said, adding that he would press the Saudis to ensure air strikes were “discriminate and precise”.
“By participating in attacks that violate the laws of war and by providing weapons and munitions to a military force that can be expected to use them unlawfully, the USA risks complicity in violations by coalition forces”, Human Rights Watch wrote in a letter to Kerry last week.
Kerry said the global response to Yemen’s civil war had fallen short of the region’s needs, and pledged a renewed political and security approach to resume talks.
Yemen’s dominant Shiite Houthi group and its allies said Sunday they would deal with a plan put forth by the United States to resume peace talks with a goal of forming a national unity government, only once the Saudi-led coalition “aggression” halted and “economic siege” lifted. “This has a clarity to it about how confidence can be built, what the end game looks like, and how the parties get there”.
Kerry said that the restoration of stability to Yemen is not only vital to ease the suffering of civilians but also to ensure that extremist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda can’t exploit the chaos.
The civil war and Saudi-led airstrikes have since killed over 6,500 people, mostly civilians, and displaced other three million.
The U.N. said air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in support of Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi were suspected of causing about half of all civilian deaths in Yemen.
The announcement came following meetings in Saudi Arabia with representatives of Riyadh, Great Britain and the United Arab Emirates.
Saudi Arabia and its allies view the Houthis, who hail from a branch of Shi’ite Islam, as proxies of their archrival Iran.
Foreing Minister Zarif, who is on a LatAm tour now, has reacted to statements by US Secretary of State John Kerry who had accused Iran of sending military equipment to Yemen, Foreign Ministry’s Media Diplomacy Department reported on Friday.
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The kingdom also backs armed rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
