UN, S Arabia not seeking peace for Yemenis: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Hazem Salem, activist and political commentator from Cairo, about an announcement by UN special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh, which says the Yemen peace talks in Kuwait is going to be suspended on Saturday.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How do you think that this Kuwait peace talks went?

Salem: Well, actually it’s very clear that the talks were not going to go any further and there was no intention from the Saudi side or even from the UN side to get to a real discussion and negotiation. And that’s why things ended up by throwing a deal by the UN on the table with the idea of take it or leave it. And that deal could not be accepted by the other side and thus the negotiations collapsed.

There has been three and half months of hectic meetings that were not scheduled or structured in a way that leads to a breakthrough or a deal. Despite that the Yemeni side or the Yemeni opposition or the Ansarullah side wanted to get to something, but the pro-Saudi Arabia Hadi and the UN had been trying to force a certain deal that is coming to the outcomes before the sequence of events that lead to these outcomes.

The outcome is withdrawal and giving up weapons before any peace deal and arrangements for peace to be made. And that’s why I think that Kuwait on one side decided not to continue with this and the UN has no clue about what to do. And Saudi Arabia has no intention to continue anything that might lead to a reconciliation or a deal and that’s why it was suspended but it’s another word of saying that it has failed because the UN and Saudi Arabia did not want it to succeed from the first place.

Press TV: Why didn’t Saudi Arabia or as you said the United Nations want this to succeed? Certainly, many people said this war is costing the Saudis a lot not just their image but also financial terms obviously.

Salem: Because it was a sort of zero-sum game for Saudi Arabia going to Yemen and fighting in Yemen and bombarding Yemen was supposed to be something that takes very short while and then things would be arranged the Saudi way, but this didn’t happen. So, the idea of going to negotiations was not to get to a deal, but to impose a surrender on the other side and to impose certain Saudi interest based deal and that’s why thought of a zero-sum logic instead of being realistic and understanding that for the benefit of all Yemenis there should be a deal.

That’s why didn’t want to succeed from the beginning and they abused it throughout the three and half months and then they allowed it to fail. But the UN envoy just wanted to cosmetically deal with the situation saying it is suspended instead of saying that it has failed unless the Saudis change their minds and be serious about getting into a deal.

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