RIYADH (Dispatches) – The United States’ national security adviser Jake Sullivan has met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and reviewed what the White House called “significant progress” in Yemen peace efforts, the White House said.
On a trip aimed at bolstering sometimes strained ties with Riyadh, Sullivan also held joint talks with the crown prince, UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan and India’s national security adviser Ajit Doval.
Sullivan’s meeting came after a period in which U.S.-Saudi ties have been damaged by oil production cuts by Saudi-led OPEC+ and the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“He reviewed significant progress in talks to further consolidate the now 15-month long truce in Yemen and welcomed ongoing UN-led efforts to bring the war to a close, as well as covering a range of other issues,” the White House statement said.
During the meeting on Sunday, Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s top national security aide, also thanked the crown prince for Saudi support to U.S. citizens during evacuations from Sudan, the statement added.
U.S. special envoy Tim Lenderking travelled to Oman and Saudi Arabia earlier this month to seek to advance Yemen peace efforts, the State Department said.
Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistical support from the United States and several other Western states.
The objective was to return power to Yemen’s former Riyadh-backed regime and crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.
While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to achieve any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
A UN-mediated ceasefire between Ansarullah and the self-proclaimed Yemeni regime, which is supported by Saudi Arabia, broke down last October six months after it went into effect.