The new peace approach will have “a security and political track simultaneously working to provide a comprehensive settlement”, he said, adding Gulf states had “agreed unanimously on the initiative” after three months of talks in Kuwait ended earlier this month without making headway.
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The secretary of state said the new “fair and sensible” plan calls for a unity government and a transfer of heavy weapons from the Houthi rebel group to a third party.
Between March 2015 and August 2016, around 3,800 civilians were killed and another 6,700 wounded due to armed conflict in Yemen.
In a new report, the United Nations laid out a long line of allegations of grave human rights abuses by all sides in Yemen’s bloody conflict, which has left almost 4,000 civilians dead.
Iran’s foreign minister is rejecting claims from Saudi Arabia that his country supplied the Shiite rebels in Yemen with missiles.
The strikes came a day after the United Nations demanded an worldwide investigation in the killings of civilians in Yemen. The security situation receded further as the Houthis overtook the capital city Sana’a in September 2014 and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government into exile. The talks covered bilateral cooperation in various fields between the Kingdom and the United States and the latest developments in the region. A number of USA lawmakers have also expressed concern about Washington’s role in the conflict.
Mr Kerry’s meeting with King Salman lasted roughly half an hour.
Penny Lawrence, the group’s deputy chief executive, said: “UK arms and military support are fuelling a brutal war in Yemen, harming the very people the Arms Trade Treaty is created to protect”.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states back rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, and are members of the USA -led coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria. Mr Kerry is scheduled for talks with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Geneva on Friday.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, at a joint press conference with Kerry, said Riyadh had been “extremely careful and cautious” in trying to avoid noncombatant casualties. Russian Federation and Iran, however, are strong backers of the Syrian president and have been accused of targeting moderate opposition forces, some of whom are supported by Washington and Gulf Arab states.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the Gulf belong to a US-led military alliance battling Daesh (so-called IS) militant group which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq. “We can not have this assertion that there is a crime or war crime”, Alnsour said, adding, “We are saying while conducting military operations there are specific principles should be respected to minimise civilian casualties”.
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Steve Goose, arms director at HRW and chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, an worldwide coalition of groups working to eradicate cluster munitions, said Saudi Arabia has used various types of US-made cluster munitions, including CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapons, in its war against Yemen despite evidence of mounting civilian casualties.
