WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – The U.S. is seeking to disrupt efforts to establish a nationwide peace across the impoverished Yemen, the head of the country’s Supreme Political Council (SPC) has warned, following recent direct talks between representatives from the Yemeni Ansarullah resistance movement and Saudi officials.
SPC Chief Mahdi al-Mashat said that Washington does not desire the resolution of Yemen’s devastating humanitarian crisis – recognized by the United Nations as the world’s worst – and reiterated that prolongation of the disaster would neither serve the interests of the Saudi government nor the Middle East region.
“Saudi authorities should not surrender to pressure from U.S. officials. Capitulation to Americans’ outrageous demands would bear nothing other than destruction and instability,” the high-profile Yemeni official then pointed out.
Mashat made the remarks days after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud to weigh in on Riyadh’s continued role in the negotiations with the Ansarullah movement and the ongoing Yemeni peace process.
This is while Saudi and Omani delegations held talks earlier this month with Ansarullah officials in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a, with the progress of the talks lauded by several parties to the conflict.
Following the talks, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed bin Saeed al-Jaber, declared in a Twitter message that the talks were meant to “stabilize the truce and cease-fire, support the prisoner exchange process and explore venues of dialogue between Yemeni components to reach a sustainable, comprehensive political solution in Yemen.”
Mashat further stated that the next round of talks with Saudi Arabia would begin following the upcoming Eid al-Fitr holiday, marking the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Yemen’s official Saba news agency reported.
The developments also come days after scores of people were killed and hundreds more injured in Yemen’s capital due to a stampede that broke out during a charity distribution, according to the country’s Ansarullah resistance movement.
Al-Houthi health officials told AFP on Thursday that at least 85 were killed and 322 were injured following the incident in the Bab al-Yemen area of Sana’a on Wednesday night.
Earlier, a spokesman for the Yemeni interior ministry said in a statement, “Dozens of people were killed due to a stampede during a random distribution of sums of money by some merchants.”
The interior ministry statement said the dead and injured have been moved to nearby hospitals and those responsible for the distribution were taken into custody, according to the Saba news agency.