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News ID: 86842
Publish Date : 23 January 2021 - 21:50

Suspicious Blast Near Riyadh as U.S. Moves to Delist Houthis

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- The U.S. State Department has initiated a review of the terrorist designation of Yemen’s popular Houthi movement and is working as fast as it can to conclude the process and make a determination, a State Department spokesperson says.
President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this week that Washington would take a look at the designation, which UN officials and aid groups fear is complicating efforts to combat the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
"As noted by Secretary-Designate Blinken, the State Department has initiated a review of Ansarallah’s terrorist designations,” the spokesperson said, using the name for the Houthi movement fighting a Saudi invasion of Yemen.
"We will not publicly discuss or comment on internal deliberations regarding that review; however, with the humanitarian crisis in Yemen we are working as fast as we can to conduct the review and make a determination,” the spokesperson said.
The United Nations describes Yemen as the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis, with 80% of its people in need.
Aid groups and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had warned against a possible designation, which was one of the parting shots of the Trump administration, saying Yemen was in imminent danger of the worst famine the world has seen for decades.
Saudi Arabia launched a war on Yemen in 2015, in a bid to crush Houthis and return a former regime to power. UN officials are trying to revive peace talks to end the war as Yemen’s suffering is worsened by an economic collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Tuesday, the United States exempted aid groups, the United Nations, the Red Cross and the export of agricultural commodities, medicine, and medical devices from its designation, but the carve outs are not enough to allay UN fears that Washington’s move would push Yemen into a large-scale famine.

Suspicious Blast

State media in Saudi Arabia claimed that it intercepted Saturday a "hostile target” over Riyadh which has come under repeated retaliatory attack from Yemen since 2015.
It was unclear who was behind the incident, with the kingdom’s brief statement stopping short of accusing anyone and the Houthis saying they were not involved.
A blast was heard in the Saudi capital at around 11am (08:00 GMT), AFP correspondents reported.
The Saudi military said it had "intercepted and destroyed a hostile air target going towards Riyadh,” without elaborating, according to state-run Al Ekhbariya television station.
Riyadh’s King Khaled International Airport said there were a number of flight delays, but it was not immediately clear if they were linked to Saturday’s incident.
Yemen’s army spokesman Yahya Saree said his country was not behind the incident and "have not conducted any offensive operations against the aggressor countries in the past 24 hours”.
In a statement, Saree added that "any operation is announced with full pride and honor”.

Deal With Taliban

The new Biden administration also said it will review the agreement Washington reached with the Taliban last year, which is mainly focused on withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
Biden’s newly appointed national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, informed his Afghan counterpart Hamdullah Mohib about the "United States’ intention to review” the deal in a phone call

on Friday, according to a White House statement.
Sullivan said Washington wants to check that the Taliban side is "living up to its commitments to… reduce violence in Afghanistan, and to engage in meaningful negotiations with the Afghan government and other stakeholders.”
The U.S. reached a deal with the Taliban in February last year on the withdrawal of 12,000 American troops from Afghanistan in exchange for the Taliban to halt attacks on American forces.
Under the deal, the former President Donald Trump’s administration promised to bring the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to zero by May 2021.
Sediq Sediqqi, deputy interior minister and former spokesman to President Ashraf Ghani, on Friday said the agreement had failed to achieve its stated goals.
Last week, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan went down to 2,500, the lowest level of American forces there since 2001.
International calls for a ceasefire between the Afghan government and the Taliban have increased as violence levels have surged in the country over the past months.
A report said last year that Taliban bombings and other assaults had increased by 70 percent after the U.S.-Taliban agreement.
On Thursday, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi called on the new U.S. president to follow up on the ongoing Afghan peace process and American troops withdrawal from the country.
"I think they [Biden administration] should realize there is an opportunity in Afghanistan and they should persevere with what was initiated and not reverse things,” Qureshi told Qatar’s Al Jazeera Arabic broadcaster.
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 under the pretext of the so-called war on terror, overthrowing the Taliban regime.
Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Washington has spent more than two trillion dollars waging the war on the impoverished country, according to some estimates. Over 2,400 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed.