Yemen’s Houthi-run governing council said on Sunday it was ready to restart peace talks with the country’s exiled government provided a Saudi-led coalition stopped attacking and besieging Houthi-held territories.
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It said airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen were suspected of causing more than half of the civilian deaths in the time period mentioned, and that the coalition had committed other violations that might contravene worldwide law.
“The threat potentially posed by the shipment of missiles and other sophisticated weapons into Yemen from Iran extends well beyond Yemen and is not a threat just to Saudi Arabia and. the region”, he said.
He also met with Foreign Minister Alawi bin Abdullah of Oman before a meeting with other Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers from Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar.
“This leaves nothing for future speculation”, Kerry said. “This has a clarity to it about how confidence can be built, what the end game looks like, and how the parties get there”. “It is a threat to the USA and it can not continue”.
The intention of forming a unity government has been an Al Houthi demand from early on, but further encouragement to Al Houthis to take the talks seriously was a GCC-US agreement that when the rebels disarm they can give their weapons to a neutral third party.
The U.N. human rights chief on Thursday called for an global investigation of rights abuses and violence in Yemen’s civil war which has killed thousands of people, insisting that a domestic panel set up to look into violations has not been up to the task.
In March of previous year, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive military campaign in Yemen aimed at reversing Houthi military gains and restoring Hadi’s embattled government.
Six month’s after Hadi’s ousting, in March 2015, Saudi Arabia assembled a coalition of mostly Sunni Arab nations to fight back the Houthi rebels.
The coordination with Washington’s major Middle East allies came on the eve of Syria talks in Geneva between Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states back rebels fighting Syrian president Bashar Assad’s forces, and are members of the US-led coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria.
The Houthis and forces allied to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee the country.
The U.S. has also participated in the coalition – providing intelligence, aerial refueling and precision guided munitions.
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And despite Kerry’s words about seeking peace in Yemen, the USA continues to supply Saudi Arabia with weapons that have been used to kill civilians in that country.
