Yemeni FM Welcomes Iran’s Peace Initiative

Date: 14 January 2022 - 21:44

News ID: ۹۸۸۷۶

SANAA (Dispatches) -- Yemeni Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah has praised the Iranian peace initiative, saying it presents an effective solution to the ongoing conflict in the war-ravaged country.
“The Iranian initiative offers a solution, deals with the war and blockade in Yemen, and provides a mechanism for inclusive intra-Yemeni dialogue as well as ways to de-escalate the status quo,” Abdullah said on Thursday.
“The study or slight modifications of the Iranian initiative will help resolution of the lingering crisis in Yemen, and everyone should consider the plan,” the foreign minister of the Yemeni National Salvation Government added.
In April 2015, Iran proposed a four-point peace plan for Yemen. The plan called for an immediate ceasefire and end of all foreign military attacks, humanitarian assistance, a resumption of broad national dialogue and “establishment of an inclusive national unity government.”
Abdullah noted that Saudi Arabia was looking for a pretext to prolong its devastating military aggression against Yemen.
“What we want to tell them is the fact that they will not manage to defeat the Yemeni nation through their onslaught. All we want is negotiations in good faith,” Abdullah stated.
“Massacre and destruction is not the right way,” he said. “We are fighting for our nation. We do not want anything from Saudi Arabia, but Riyadh seeks dominance over our country.”
He called on the Saudi-led coalition to end its support for takfiri terrorist groups in Yemen, stressing that the foreign-backed extremists would not lead to a peaceful settlement of Yemen crisis by any means.
Abdullah also lambasted Saudi Arabia for having used footage from a documentary on the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq to accuse Yemeni armed forces of stockpiling ballistic missiles in the besieged Red Sea port city of Hudaydah.

The top Yemeni diplomat said the footage was nothing but a piece of cinematic work, and it was meant to invent pretexts for a strike on Hudaydah.
He then slammed the international community’s stance vis-à-vis the Saudi war on Yemen.
“Every country pursues its own interests. That explains why many world states are silent [on Yemen war] and standing idly by. Their interests are close to those of aggressors, particularly Saudi Arabia,” Abdullah said.
He said the Yemeni nation has the right to live in a free and independent country, and that Yemen seeks peaceful relations with others.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases.
The Yemeni armed forces and allied Popular Committees, however, have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders, and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.