Yemen Says Might Not Extend UN Truce

Date: 01 August 2022 - 21:58

News ID: ۱۰۵۳۴۷

SANA’A (Dispatches) – The prime minister of Yemen’s National Salvation Government says it might not extend a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire in the war-torn country as it has failed to bring much-needed breathing room for civilians.

Abdulaziz bin Habtoor said that the Supreme Political Council and the Sana’a-based government should look into tangible achievements of the extension of the truce in the past few months before making any decisions to further extend it.

He underlined that most of the estimated 1.2 million Yemeni civil servants have received little or no salaries and that Sana’a International Airport remains closed to commercial flights.

The resolution of these two issues will definitely pave the ground for the UN-backed truce to be extended once again, Habtoor said.

A truce between Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement and the ousted Saudi-backed government which is currently based in Aden was agreed upon in early April. The initial two-month truce was extended for another two months on June 2.

But there are still no signs of a breakthrough in UN-backed talks between the warring parties.

Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, has underscored the necessity for the Saudi-led coalition to stop the war and siege on the impoverished Yemeni nation.

During a meeting with a visiting Omani delegation in the capital Sana’a on Sunday, Mashat emphasized the importance of a durable peace agreement that would guarantee the sovereignty and independence of the Yemeni people.

The senior Yemeni official said that the truce extension should lead to tangible results in the economic and human conditions of the Yemeni nation, including the payment of salaries to all civil servants and pensioners.

‘Yemeni Forces Ready

to Fight Back’

The spokesman for Yemen’s Armed Forces has warned the Saudi-led coalition that Yemeni forces are ready to fight if the war coalition decides to continue its aggression against the impoverished Arab country.

“If the Saudi aggressor coalition wants peace, the negotiating delegation has given more than enough [concessions] and if it wants war, we are ready for it,” Lebanon-based al-Mayadeen television quoted Brigadier General Yahya Saree as saying.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and other Western states.

The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and crush the 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 meet any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.