SANA’A (Dispatches) – Yemen’s Sana’a-based government has warned Saudi Arabia that they will strike the kingdom and its coalition allies if attacked, as the two sides continue to engage in talks to secure a lasting ceasefire.
According to the Saba News Agency, Yemen’s Defence Minister, Mohamed al-Atifi, stated in a visit to Hudaydah province that the current situation “is heading towards calm and reaching comprehensive peace”, amid significant progress in talks between the Saudis and the Sana’a-based government.
Earlier this month, Saudi Arabian and Omani delegations met with the Yemeni officials in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, in what were the first direct and open talks between representatives from both sides.
Prior to that, the two sides had agreed to a huge prisoner swap in talks held in Switzerland, which resulted in the freeing and exchange of prisoners this month. Further progress is soon to be expected as a new round of talks has been set to take place following the Eid holiday and celebrations.
Al-Atifi warned, however, that if the Saudi-led coalition breaches the unofficial ceasefire, Yemen will escalate and move the fighting to within Saudi Arabia and its allies. “All of this depends on the sincerity of the intentions of the leaders of the aggression coalition with what has been agreed upon with the revolutionary [Ansarullah] leadership and its affiliated political council”, he stated.
Reiterating that a “commitment to these understandings is in the interest of the region and its people”, he added that coalition members would face heavy losses and an “endless predicament” in such a situation.
“They must learn from previous lessons because our guns, cannons, missiles and drones are ready”, the Yemeni official said, threatening that any upcoming battle will not be within Yemen but “in the distant depth of the aggressive” nations.
Saudi Arabia launched its brutal war of aggression against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its regional allies along with plenty of arms deliveries and logistics support from the US and several other Western governments to reinstall former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who resigned from the presidency in late 2014 and later fled to Riyadh amid a political conflict with the popular Ansarullah movement.
The key objective of the war was to crush the Ansarullah movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.
However, the Saudi-led military aggression has stopped well shy of all of its objectives, despite leaving tens of thousands of Yemenis killed and many more starved and displaced, turning the entire country into what is widely recognized as the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.