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News ID: 50332
Publish Date : 21 February 2018 - 21:37
Veteran British Politician:

Saudi Arabia Faces ‘Certain Defeat’ in Yemen

LONDON (Dispatches) -- A former Conservative cabinet minister has said that Saudi Arabia faces "certain defeat" and humiliation in Yemen and has called on British Prime Minister Theresa May to use the upcoming visit of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman to pressure the kingdom to halt its bombardment of the country.
In an interview with Middle East Eye, the former secretary for international development Andrew Mitchell said it was now clear Saudi Arabia would "not win a war from the air" and warned that the "human misery and heartache" in Yemen would continue unless UK and international pressure was used to force Saudi Arabia to return to the negotiating table.
Saudi Arabia has conducted bombing missions in Yemen since 2015 with arms and military support from the U.S., UK and other countries. At least 13,600 civilians have been killed in the conflict, though the true death toll is potentially far higher as few organizations on the ground have the resources to count the dead.
"Saudi Arabia will not win a war from the air and the certainty of its defeat is underlined by the small scale of the Saudi forces on the ground in Yemen," Mitchell said.
"The current situation will lead to its humiliation in respect to Yemen, but also in relations to the wider region and with Iran."
The visit by the powerful Saudi crown prince to London next month, during which he will meet senior royals and the prime minister, Theresa May, is set to highlight the UK's close relationship with Saudi Arabia and its conduct in the three-year war on Yemen.
Mitchell said ministers must take a firm line with the crown prince over Yemen to steer him away from a "failed policy that has brought misery and heartache" to Yemen.
His comments come after shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry demanded that May stops "bowing and scraping" to the crown prince and halts the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
The comments by Mitchell also come as the UK has drafted a UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran for allegedly violating the arms embargo on Yemen.
The UK move will likely be welcomed in Riyadh, but has prompted allegations from Mitchell that the UK, which has licensed the export of more than $6.4bn of arms to Saudi Arabia since 2015, is not being "even handed".
Mitchell said: "In the same way we condemned the Houthi attack on Riyadh airport, we must not be afraid to condemn the nightly attacks on Yemen by the Saudi air force that have killed and maimed innocent men, women and children."
He added that the UK must be "even handed" and work towards the goal of negotiations without conditions to end the conflict.
The British government claims it is pressing Saudi Arabia to boost the flow of humanitarian aid to Yemen, and is lobbying for a peaceful solution to the conflict, which has allowed militant groups, including Al-Qaeda and Daesh, to flourish in the chaos of war.
The British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, on Monday accused Iran of supplying military equipment to force in Yemen, in breach of a UN arms embargo.
"I call on Iran to cease activity which risks escalating the conflict and to support a political solution to the conflict in Yemen," he said.
A UN report also listed 10 incidents in which Saudi airstrikes killed 157 civilians, including at least 85 children. The strikes targeted residential building, factories and civilian vessels, prompting the UN experts to find that Saudi forces had failed to adhere to "principles of international law of proportionality and precautions in attack".
It also describes measures taken to minimize child casualties by Saudi forces as "largely ineffective", in comments that are likely to prove embarrassing to officials in Westminster who have defended Saudi Arabia's targeting process, and the continued sale of UK-made weapons.
Andrew Smith, the spokesman for Campaign Against Arms Trade, or CAAT, said the Saudi bombing campaign has created one of the "worst humanitarian crises in the world".
"Thousands of people have been killed and vital infrastructure has been destroyed all across Yemen," he said.
"If Boris Johnson is serious about ending the crisis, then he and his colleagues must stop arming and supporting the Saudi regime."
In one case, the report's authors found evidence that UK-made Paveway IV bombs were used in a series of strikes on an industrial complex in September 2016.
"There is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that the factory complex had become a legitimate military objective or that the Saudi Arabia-led coalition complied with IHL principles," the report found.
Arms control experts say this is the first example of UK weapons being so directly linked to alleged breaches of international law by UN experts.
Oliver Feeley-Sprague, Amnesty International UK's arms control director, told MEE: "There have already been a series of cases in Yemen where UK weaponry - including cluster munitions - sold to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition has been used in breach of international humanitarian law, but the UN report is a significant reminder to the UK government that its reckless arming of the coalition is not going unnoticed.
"The UK should cease supplying weapons to all parties to this terrible conflict where there's a risk those weapons could be used to carry out further human rights violations."