Saudi bid to impose will behind failure of Yemen peace talks: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Eric Draitser, the founder of stopimperialism.com in New York, to ask for his insight on the failure of UN-sponsored talks on Yemen.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How predictable was it for you that these talks would fail?

Draitser: Well, unfortunately, this was entirely predictable and I in fact said exactly that would happen a few weeks ago because quite frankly the reality is that the negotiations were predicated on essentially a fallacy namely that there would be good-faith negotiations from both sides, which is absolutely not the case.

In fact, the Saudis backing their former poppet government under Hadi... the Saudis were not willing to engage in good-faith negotiations unless they were going to be negotiating from a position of strength. And when it comes to these Geneva talks, they were not negotiating from a position of strength quite frankly because their military campaign, the bombardment campaign and otherwise has been an abject failure while of course they’ve devastated the country, they’ve destroyed a lot of infrastructure, they’ve killed who knows exactly how many civilians.

They’ve not been able to break any of the political, military and strategic alliances between the Houthis, the Ansarullah movement, the Saleh forces and some of the other associated groups. Those alliances have not broken. Because that resistance continues to be strong, the Saudis and Hadi have not been able to impose their will on political process.

Remember, what they would like to do in Geneva is to impose an agreement that is to their benefit that actually achieved the strategic objectives of Riyadh rather than one that actually demonstrates some kind of a peace and settlement for Yemen. And that’s really what has not happened and that’s why the Geneva talk failed.

Press TV: Why is it that we don’t see any practical move by the United Nations to stop this war, which Saudi Arabia launched without a U-N mandate?

Draitser: Well, quite frankly, it’s because the United Nations is a toothless organization, a spineless organization, one that is more or less at the disposal of the United States and the Western powers. And despite the fact that the United Nations might give token symbolic gestures about peace and humanitarians, in fact they’re not able to actually challenge the hegemony of Washington and its allies. And this is true all across a number of different issues, including those issues such as with Israel, where the United Nations may make condemnations, but they’re not actually able to enforce anything; and this is of course because the United States stands behind Israel, just as the United States stands behind Saudi Arabia.

And because Saudi Arabia is committing this illegal aggression, there should of course be a UN Security Council resolution condemning them. There should be criminal charges brought up, but none of that is going to happen so long as the United States stands behind them; and unfortunately, that’s the reality of the modern world.

Press TV: And finally, can Yemen take any legal action against Saudi Arabia or would it be a lost cause?

Draitser: Well, they could take whatever legal action they would like and of course I’m not a legal scholar, so I can’t exactly explain what various legal courses of action they might pursue.

What I can say for certain, though, is objectively speaking, what the Saudis are doing is they’re committing war crimes. Not only are they committing collective punishment... on the people of Yemen, they’re doing so without a UN mandate, without a Security Council resolution, they are in effect engaging in an aggressive and unprovoked war.

Now, of course the United States, which stands behind Saudi Arabia, has a long history in recent years of very similar aggressive unprovoked and illegal wars. So, I don’t think the Saudis really believe that they’re doing anything that their patrons in Washington aren’t approving of.

ABN/HJL

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